The Right Place by Voss Porter

Author:Voss Porter [Porter, Voss]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Dark Hollows Press
Published: 2017-01-05T23:00:00+00:00

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Why did I order pancakes? Why can’t I just eat a handful of blueberries and a banana, like Rachel, and go on about my day? If Mary Elizabeth lived her life more in that vein, she would not be quite so rotund.

I want pancakes because I climbed an asshole of a mountain yesterday. That is why I want the pancakes, and that is why I deserve the pancakes.

Alma reemerged from the doorway carrying a large, red mug filled with coffee, a jug of creamer, packets of sweetener, and a bin of pancake mix. She set the caffeinated accoutrements squarely down in front of Eliza and then disappeared a second time. When she came back, it was with milk, eggs, a bowl, and small squirt jar of vanilla extract.

“You really don’t have to do all of this,” she put it off. “I don’t want to be an inconvenience. You stayed with me all day yesterday and now I’m forcing you to make pancakes for me.”

“You’re not forcing me,” she said, offhand, measuring out a portion of dry mix to dump into a stainless steel bowl. “You’re a guest, you’re entitled to eat.”

“Then where’s everyone else?” Eliza added enough creamer to turn her deep, black coffee a distinctly lighter shade and then sprinkled three packets of sugar in. “I can’t be the only one left.”

Milk and eggs went into the bowl. “I think everyone else got room service. Tara was up early working it all out.”

“I didn’t know we could order any room service,” she said, coyly. “That would have been so much easier.” I would not have had to climb out of bed, shower, put on clothes, brush my teeth, and crawl from the bungalow to the main pergola. A wince trickled across her rosy cheeks and up to her eyes, eyes that drank in the sight of Alma Harley O’Banyon, the picture of health.

Please don’t say anything stupid, she thought, as she watched Alma take a whisk and slosh the liquid around in the bowl, spinning it a little as she worked, the way Yvonne did, back home. She said her mother taught her to whisk that way, to minimize the splashes that spray back at her clothes.

“Are you feeling a bit stiff today?” Alma asked, with a hooded gaze. “I know I am.”

Oh, yeah right. You’re probably just as annoyingly filled with energy as my stupid sister is, bounding up at five and singing in the damn shower. Now she’s at yoga.

“I am a little sore,” she lied through clenched teeth. Every part of her body ached, every muscle, every bone, all of the nerve endings. For a body unused to hiking, Cabo Blanco had been quite the undertaking. “Rachel, however, is totally fine. She’s more than fine. I think the hike gave her more energy.” Coughing into her hand, she winced as her chest contracted. “Is that even possible?”

Alma chuckled, and plugged the griddle into a small socket on her left, beneath a painted, wooden parrot that was hanging in a circular, wooden ring with a pipe in its mouth.

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