Little Mercies. Heather Gudenkauf

Чтение книги онлайн.

       Chapter 10

      As the police officers approached, Jenny froze in fear, a chunk of pancake lodging in her throat midswallow. She reached for her milk, took a swift drink and swallowed hard, willing the mass to slide down her windpipe. Ducking beneath the table, Jenny pretended to search for something on the floor, only raising her head when she was sure the officers had retreated to the far side of the restaurant.

      With a sigh of relief, Jenny dug into her breakfast and ten minutes later, the eggs, bacon and four red-tinted, chocolaty pancakes were gone and Jenny was licking syrup from her sticky fingers, her belly uncomfortably full. Jenny fished inside her backpack and pulled out an envelope addressed to Jenny at the apartment where she first came to live with her father. The return address sent a shiver of excitement down her spine. Margaret Flanagan, 2574 Hickory Street, Cedar City, IA. It was like discovering an unexpected world, like Narnia and Nimh, the places her teacher read to them about, were real. It was a card for her fifth birthday from her grandmother. Her mother’s mother.

      The day the letter arrived she watched as her father held the envelope in his callused hands. The letters they usually received were stark white envelopes holding bills that caused Billy to swear beneath his breath. This one he held carefully, staring silently down at the lavender envelope and for a moment Jenny was scared.

      “It’s for you,” he said. Jenny, bouncing in anticipation, squealed in delight when a ten-dollar bill fell out as Billy opened the card. Jenny begged him to read it to her and tell her who it was from. “Your grandma,” he said grimly. “It’s from your mom’s mother.” Dutifully, he read the birthday card to Jenny, then retreated silently to his bedroom where he stayed for a very long time. Despite her father’s obvious lack of enthusiasm about the letter, Jenny was thrilled and incessantly pestered her father about going to visit her grandmother in Cedar City someday. They never did. Her father lost his job, they moved from their apartment and Jenny never received another letter or card from her grandmother. Eventually, Jenny stopped asking about her.

      But now, sitting in a restaurant in Cedar City, in the very town where Jenny’s mother grew up, where her grandmother may still live, she slowly, methodically deciphered her grandmother’s handwriting. It was written in tiny, cramped cursive and Jenny, on her best days, struggled to read a menu. In the card, her grandmother said she was sorry that her daughter, Jenny’s mother, wasn’t there for her. That she didn’t used to be this way. She was once a caring, loving little girl who spent her days riding her bike around Cedar City and evenings catching fireflies and playing Kick the Can and Boys Chase the Girls. Jenny couldn’t imagine her mournful-faced mother ever hollering Ollie, Ollie oxen free at the top of her lungs and kicking at an old rusty coffee can with all her might.