The Repeat Year by Andrea Lochen

Author:Andrea Lochen
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2013-03-18T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 13

It was a hot, muggy afternoon. Olive’s black steering wheel scorched her hands, so she drove with her fingertips. College girls in sundresses and flip-flops walked lazily down the streets. Sailboats drifted in the distance, looking like bobbing seagulls as she curved her way around the lake to Maple Bluff.

The weeks leading up to her mom’s wedding had spilled into each other like waves at high tide. June 25 had seemed so far away, but now it was already the day before they left for St. Lucia. Olive couldn’t believe she was almost halfway through her year. All her good intentions—helping her mom prepare for the wedding, reaching out to her brother, checking in on Sherry after her mastectomy—had never become more than intentions.

When she wasn’t working, she and Phil were taking Cashew to the dog park, eating at little sidewalk cafés on State Street, or tumbling into bed together. Just the other day, she’d gotten off work at seven in the morning, positively ravenous for him. Instead of going home to bed like she usually did, she picked up his favorite coffee drink, a large hazelnut latte, and drove to his apartment. He answered the door with his shirt unbuttoned, his tie slung around his neck, and his hair still damp from the shower, and she couldn’t help herself; she’d thrown herself into his arms and almost made him late for his first-period class. After he managed to leave, she burrowed into his bed and slept for eight hours, then showered, climbed back into bed, and waited for him to get home for another round. It was intoxicating, just like the year they had first met, and she felt like a lovesick college student again.

But she hadn’t heard from Sherry since their chance encounter at the hospital, and the image of her—washed-out, vulnerable, alone—gnawed at Olive and disrupted her otherwise rose-colored summer. Sherry needed help, even if she didn’t want it, and Olive was clearly the one to give it. She was most likely the only one in Sherry’s life who even knew about her breast cancer, and she was definitely the only one who knew about the repeating. There were only sixteen hours to go until her flight, and she hadn’t even started packing, but she needed to see Sherry.

Maple Bluff was a wealthy village, where the governor himself lived in a mansion. Many of the houses overlooked the lake. There were no sidewalks and many of the snaking roads were so steep that other cars and houses appeared only when you were almost on top of them. Olive didn’t know how Sherry could afford to live in Maple Bluff. While her house was on the side of the road that didn’t overlook the lake and was substantially smaller than many of the surrounding homes, it still had an impressive log façade with giant picture windows. As far as she knew, Sherry held no steady job. She suspected she had inherited money from one or all of her past husbands.

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