Pages for You by Sylvia Brownrigg

Author:Sylvia Brownrigg [Brownrigg, Sylvia]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Fiction, General
ISBN: 9781447206811
Google: hwfqP-IIp20C
Amazon: B005AV5VJE
Publisher: Picador
Published: 2011-07-06T00:00:00+00:00

Christmas Day they spent as usual with her mother’s sister’s family at a Better Homes and Gardens spread of gifts and foods produced by Flannery’s shiny hostessy aunt. Sometime after gingerbread and ice cream, Flannery suddenly felt faint with her contained silences and the sharp pain of missing Anne. She couldn’t focus anymore on the conversations around her, which had nothing to do with the only person she felt like talking to. She excused herself, saying she had to take a walk.

Her older cousin Rachel joined her. This wasn’t part of Flannery’s plan. It was solitude she was after, a moment restored to the detailed adorations of her Anne-fixed mind. Now, with coiffed Rachel walking crisp-heeled beside her, more hiding and dissembling would be required.

They walked up the quiet suburban hill, toward the bend from which they could watch the bay. Rachel, not an especially sensitive creature, launched into a complaint about her stuffy parents and from there, seamlessly, into a long account of her college boyfriend, and how freaked out her mother would be if she knew that Rachel had been having sex. Flannery, half-listening, pulled out a packet of Marlboros from inside her down jacket.

“God! Flannery. When did you start smoking?”

“Recently.” It was an experimental habit she had just taken up for a specific reason: she wanted to make her mouth taste like Anne’s.

“I can’t believe it. You’ve always been so clean-cut.”

Flannery nodded noncommittally. Hoping her careless (unpracticed) smoking might put a dent in that image.

“So,” said Rachel, suddenly more interested in her younger cousin, who’d always seemed a bit stiff and studious before. “Has college back East turned you into a wild child? A party animal?”

Flannery smiled. “Maybe. A little.”

“Do you have a boyfriend out there?”

She looked at the ground. She was a little dizzy; the nicotine made her head spin. “No.”

“Really?” Rachel, charitably, looked surprised. “Well, I wouldn’t worry about it. You probably will soon. But you know what?” She lowered her voice as if to share an important, helpful confidence. “Maybe you should quit smoking. Guys might find it off-putting—it makes your breath stink.”

Flannery coughed and crushed her Marlboro underfoot. She couldn’t answer for a minute. Instead, she looked out over the bay’s serene spread of water and suppressed a small yelp of helpless longing.

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