I Chose a New Life novel · Chapter 24 of 24

Chapter 24: New Life

On Saturday of Labor Day weekend, Roxana slept until nine.

I know because I stood at the bottom of Rhoda's stairs at eight-thirty with a mug in each hand.

Rhoda put a finger to her lips.

"Let her," she said. "First morning nobody's texting her."

"She doesn't have a phone."

"She has a phone. She has one with a cracked screen, in my junk drawer, turned off."

The kitchen smelled of cinnamon.

A woman in a green cardigan sat at the table with her hands around a cup, looking at the ceiling.

Roxana's mother had driven over from Superior on Thursday with a casserole and a duffel.

She had cried in Rhoda's front hall for twenty minutes.

Now she smiled at me over the cup.

"She sounds like she did at twelve," she said. "She's laughing at the dog in her sleep."

I laughed too.

I had my mother's gold-handled scissors in my back pocket.

They had been in the second box, wrapped in a dish towel, where I'd forgotten wrapping them.

I carried them everywhere that week and I didn't know why.

Cliff was on the porch when I came out.

He sat on the top step with his work boots untied and the harbor behind him.

The Grayling was back in her slip.

The flatbed had returned her on Wednesday with a note on the windshield from the older man in the polo that said only, Sorry.

Keep reading free with an account. Start I Chose a New Life from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.