The Last First Day by Carrie Brown

Author:Carrie Brown [Brown, Carrie]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9780307908032
Publisher: Pantheon
Published: 2013-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

A few days after Peter’s stroke, Ruth’s car had been recovered near an entrance to the Appalachian Trail in northern Maine. Someone—the man, presumably—had left a little bier of stones at the signpost, the dog’s dead body, legs tucked in neatly, nose curled to tail, beneath the heap.

Of the man himself, there was no trace. He had disappeared into the forest, back to whatever awful dark place he had come from, she assumed.

She started awake occasionally in the middle of the night, the terrible stuffed animal through whom the man had spoken snarling at her. But mostly what she felt about the whole incident was sadness, not fear. Not anymore.

Charlie Finney had driven her home from the hospital that night, after she’d seen Peter and had spoken with the doctors. Peter had been able to smile crookedly at her, to lift his hand and let her hold it. She had gripped his hand hard—probably hard enough to hurt him—and kissed his knuckles, weeping.

He wasn’t entirely out of the woods, the doctors had said that night, but they were pretty confident he’d be all right. He’d been lucky.

At the house, Charlie had gotten out to open the car door for her, and she had given him her hand, let him help her. It had stopped raining by then. The storm had blown through, leaving branches littered across the lawn, another shutter down, crashed into the bushes beneath the kitchen window. But there was no worse damage, as far as she could see.

Will you be all right, Ruth? Charlie had asked, and she had kissed his cheek, patted his shoulder.

Go on home, Charlie, she said. Thank you for your help. It’s been an awfully long day.

She had turned toward the house. Somehow, the front door had been left open—or perhaps the wind had blown it open—and inside the house was lit up, lights on in the front hall and the living room and in the kitchen, just as if the party were still going on, the drink glasses glinting on the tray, the dishes of nuts, the triumphant heads of the lilies in their vase on the hall table, the speckled brown Comice pears in the blue bowl … pears she had arranged earlier that very morning. It seemed a lifetime ago.

She walked toward the bright light, waving over her shoulder at Charlie, knowing it would all be just as she had left it, the impression of her head on the pillow and Peter somewhere nearby, still in the world.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.