Gunns & Roses(53)
Annie began to read, her movements limited to page turning, tea sipping, and the occasional cat scratching. Transported back to 1978, she experienced the workdays—and sometimes nights—of a country veterinarian through her grandfather’s eyes, each one different from the one before it. In comparison, her years of bookkeeping for the car dealership had been decidedly more staid, although not without their own charms.
Ninety minutes later she was chuckling over an incident between her grandfather and a woman “bent on poodlizing the entire town” when Alice’s voice surprised her from the other side of the porch. “What’s so funny?”
“Oh! You startled me.” Annie ran a hand over Boots’s head to apologize for interrupting the cat’s nap with her jerky movement. She raised the journal for her friend to see while Alice climbed the porch steps. “One of Grandpa’s journals,” Annie explained. “He truly had a way with words.”
Alice crossed the porch and sat in the chair on the opposite side of the table from Annie. “People don’t always write the way they talk, but Charlie certainly did.” She surveyed the stack of journals. “Looking for Gunns or Roses?”
“Either or both, I guess,” Annie replied. “And no, I haven’t found any yet, but I’m only up to 1980.” Annie passed the open journal over to her friend. “Here—read this story while I start the next one. You’ll get a kick out of it.” Noticing Alice’s eyes on her almost empty glass of tea, she added, “Would you like some sweet tea while you read?”
“Subtle, aren’t I?” said Alice. “I’d love some, but I hate to interrupt Boots’s nap there.”
Annie waved a hand, as if swatting the guilt away like a fly. “Neither of us has moved for an hour and a half. We could both stand to interrupt our inertia long enough for me to pour us some tea.”
“After yesterday, you have earned some inertia time. Though I suspect Boots had plenty of it while you were gone.” Alice reached over to rub the cat’s ears. “Why don’t you go chase mice or bugs from Annie’s garden, lazybones?” One feline eye opened into a slit for a moment before closing again. “Or maybe not.”
Chuckling, Annie picked up Boots as she stood to go get the sweet tea, and then she unceremoniously deposited the cat on the vacated cushion. After watching the woman who had put an abrupt end to nap time pick up her glass and head for the door, the feline stuck one leg out and began to groom.
“Ruffled your fur, did she?” Alice murmured before turning her attention to the journal in her hand. By the time Annie pushed open the door with her shoulder, two frosty glasses in her hands, Alice was grinning from ear to ear.
“Here you go.” Annie extended a glass toward her friend. “Funny isn’t it?”
“It’s even funnier because I remember this woman! Charlie captured her in perfect detail. She tried to convince my mother we needed to add a poodle to our household.”
Annie reclaimed her chair and took a sip. “Did it work?”
“Oh, no!” Alice laughed. “She nearly had Mother convinced, but I threatened revolt. You know, I never liked poodles. And for once, my sister, Angela, agreed with me, so Mother changed her mind.” She lifted the glass to her lips, sipped it and then exclaimed, “Wow, this is sweet!”
Annie raised an eyebrow. “Yes, dear, that’s why they call it sweet tea. It’s also why I only drink it during the warm days of Maine summer.”
“Good thing you’re not the couch-potato type,” Alice declared. “You must burn it off during your high-energy mornings.” She handed the journal back to Annie and gestured at the remaining pile. “Do you want me to start on 1981?”
Annie plucked the top book from the stack and held it out to her. “Yes! Just make sure you tell me if you find anything really hilarious, or anything about the Gunns or Roses, of course.” She paused a moment. “Do you think anyone will ever contact Ian?”
Alice laid the journal in her lap and took another sip from her glass. “Who knows? People often don’t make sense, in case you haven’t noticed.”
“And those folks seem so tightly knit,” pondered Annie. “Even more than people in Stony Point when I first came back.”
Alice was quiet as she thought of the moment she and Annie first saw each other again when Annie was unloading her car after inheriting Grey Gables from Betsy. They had put in a lot of work reconnecting after decades. “Hard to believe, isn’t it?” Alice asked “Especially when you think of the first Hook and Needle Club meeting you attended.”