The Den by Abi Maxwell

Author:Abi Maxwell
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2019-05-13T16:00:00+00:00

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They met in a coffee shop downtown. The weather was cold, unbelievably so, and so windy and gray, but Henrietta walked there because she didn’t want the woman to see her getting out of a taxi. It took her nearly an hour, just pushing against the wind. She had her duffel with her, of course. She had been a fool to not buy herself some sort of respectable bag while she’d been at the store. But then the woman didn’t even seem to notice. Henrietta just stepped into the coffee shop and the woman flagged her down, ushered her into a seat, and said, “I had a feeling that was you.”

She was old, likely in her eighties, and she said her children had kicked her out of her own house. “They think I need to be in a home,” she said bitterly. “I thought of getting a man for the house, but you know what, I like the look of an independent woman.”

Henrietta, she meant. Of course. Henrietta, an independent woman.

“You don’t have to do much. My children want to sell it, but not over my dead body. Or over my dead body, I suppose. There’s a list of everything you’ll need. Plumber, snowplow man. You just have to keep the place warm, make sure the pipes don’t freeze, keep the mice out. Get a cat if you want.” Then the woman laughed and said, “Hell, get a lover.”

Henrietta turned red. Was it that obvious, the kind of girl she was?

The woman said, “You have a car, don’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Well, go on up there, why don’t you. See if you like the look of things. Slide open the barn door, there’s a key to the back door on the eastern wall. You just go up there and have a look and see if it suits you and then you call me again.”

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