Summer Roommates by Holly Chamberlin

Author:Holly Chamberlin [Chamberlin, Holly]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Kensington Books
Published: 2023-04-14T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 49

Sandra was puttering around the house. Puttering. What an ugly word, she thought. But it was what she was doing. Earlier, she had finished the daily morning chores of cat maintenance—cleaning the litter, refreshing the water bowls, serving Clovis his breakfast—and then she had gone on to sweep the hardwood floors, give the bathrooms a quick check, make her bed, and de-hair as best she could the furniture on which Clovis preferred to spend his time. Now, though there were more interesting ways in which to occupy her time, she was—puttering.

With a sigh of frustration, Sandra went to the kitchen. She would have another cup of coffee. It would be something to do. As she poured ground coffee into the machine, her mind vaguely revisited the greetings each of her summer roommates had offered that morning, Mary in passing as she was racing toward the front door, off to a country auction; Patty in a hurry, too, afraid she would be late for work; and Amanda, on her own time and headed for a hike, backpack loaded with the essentials for health and safety.

Before this summer, the last person to have greeted Sandra over morning coffee had been her husband. After John retired, every morning had been a weekend morning, with a leisurely breakfast, the local paper and the New York Times, both delivered to the house, and chat about what each of them planned to do for the rest of the day. Only after John was gone did Sandra realize how comforting those shared mornings had been.

Nowadays, on her own, mornings still had a routine, if a less pleasant one. After a quick meal of toast and coffee, Sandra sent an e-mail to both of her children. It was more of a “check in”—hey, I’m alive—than anything substantive. Kate had requested this of her mother after her father died. “Now that you’re living on your own,” she had said, “it’s important you let someone know that you’re alive and well.” Fair enough, Sandra thought, but what if moments after hitting the send button she fell out of her chair, broke a bone in the fall, and was unable to reach for her phone, which she knew she should always have on her but often didn’t because it felt like an intrusive nuisance. Anyway, she could lie there on the floor, in pain, maybe dying, until the following morning when Kate or Jack, not hearing from their mother, called her, got no answer, and sent the police to the house.

Living alone, Sandra thought, and not for the first time, was not for sissies. If there was an aura of romance about being queen of one’s own realm, beholden to no one, that aura of romance quickly faded when you encountered a chore that was clearly too difficult to be handled by one person alone—like the raking up of millions of leaves in the autumn—or when loneliness set in, which it could do at the oddest of times.

The landline suddenly rang and Sandra started.

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