Луна. История будущего. Оливер Мортон

ribs cooking the moment she turned the corner, a block away from the old Victorian house that Jenny and Michael called home. After pulling into the driveway and getting out of her car, she patted her skirt pocket. Madge’s gift was still there.

      Still overheated after an hour in Jane’s sweltering house, she ran her fingers through her damp, short-cropped hair and followed the sound of shrieks and giggles along the winding flagstone walkway that ran along one side of the house. She stood under the arbor beneath a crown of glorious honeysuckle and surveyed the scene in the backyard. While Katy and Hannah frolicked under an umbrella sprinkler, Michael stood on the upper deck, tending the ribs sizzling on a gas grill. The picnic table on the lower deck had been set for dinner. Jenny and Madge were sitting on lawn chairs in he yard, shucking corn, with a brown shopping bag between them for the husks.

      Andrea watched Michael baste the ribs. He was forty-five, but he looked ten years younger than other men his age. The scrawny adolescent he had once been had matured into a middle-aged adult with scarcely an ounce of fat on his frame. Laugh lines creased his eyes and forehead. His neatly trimmed beard held flecks of gray, finally, but just enough to make him look distinguished. But it was the gentleness in his eyes that marked him as a treasured addition to their family.

      Andrea closed her eyes for a moment, slipped back in time and remembered herself standing in her backyard on West Beechwood Avenue. Her husband, Peter, bless his soul, was putting together a water slide. Rachel and David, about the same ages as Katy and Hannah were now, were running under the lawn sprinkler waiting for Daddy to finish. Andrea strained to keep the scene clear, but it vanished as fast as it had appeared.

      Swallowing hard, she wiped her forehead. She could scarcely remember Peter’s face anymore or the feel of his arms around her when they’d stood at the foot of their children’s beds to check on them late at night. His goodness and his patience and his love for her and the children: those qualities she remembered clearly; those she treasured…then and now.

      “Aunt Andrea! Come and play!” Katy had spotted her and came running, squealing, toward the arbor with little Hannah toddling in pursuit. “Wanna see? I can run around the sprinkler with my eyes closed! Wanna see me? Wanna try?”

      “Katy! Leave Aunt Andrea alone. She’s still dressed from work,” Michael called as he waved a welcome.

      Andrea laughed out loud. At six-thirty, the temperature was probably still in the low nineties. Definitely a day to sit by the shores of the river with your feet in the water! Or to run under a sprinkler? She was half tempted to accept Katy’s offer, and the moment Hannah tripped forward and wrapped her pudgy little arms around Andrea’s bare legs to break her fall, Andrea made her decision. She grabbed her youngest niece, swung her up to her hip, stepped out of her sandals and grinned at Katy. “We’ll race you to the sprinkler. Ready? Set? Go!”

      Andrea took small steps to keep pace with Katy, and the three of them reached the spraying water together. Oh, but the water was cold!

      “Tie! Tie!” Katy cried, and started running. “Catch me if you can!”

      “Andrea! Have you lost your mind?” Jenny called.

      “Oh, no! Andrea! What on earth are you doing?” Madge asked loudly.

      Laughing, Andrea ignored both of her sisters, set Hannah down and lifted her face to the spraying water. It felt delicious. Then she quickly stepped out from beneath the water and shook the droplets from her face.

      Katy grinned. “I guess Aunt Andrea is too old to play like me.”

      “She’s certainly old enough to know better than to run under the sprinkler in her work clothes,” Jenny teased. She handed Katy a towel and wrapped one around Hannah. “I have more towels inside. I’ll send Michael—”

      “No. I think I’d rather drip-dry,” Andrea said. “It shouldn’t take long in this heat. Besides, we’re eating outside. It shouldn’t hurt if I drip a little water on the deck.” While she used her hands to ruffle her hair back in place, she spied Madge sitting in her chair, apparently too shocked to do more than stare at her.

      Jenny nodded toward the house. “I’m going to take these young ladies inside to change into dry clothes before dinner while Michael finishes up the salad. Why don’t you talk to Madge and see if you can convince her you haven’t taken the final leap into senility?”

      Andrea shook the water from her skirt, remembered the present she had tucked into her pocket and grinned. Hopefully, the watch was waterproof. “Hurry back.”

      “Start without me. I won’t be long, just in case you need me to perform CPR. Madge is as white as Mother’s azaleas used to be.”

      While Jenny and Michael ushered the girls inside, Andrea took a deep breath and sat down next to Madge, who was shucking the last ear of corn without looking at Andrea. “You’re going to get sick, running around under the sprinkler like that,” Madge said.

      “I am sick. I had chemo this morning, remember?”

      Madge’s hands stilled, and she looked up at Andrea with tear-filled eyes. “Of course, I remember. The question is whether or not you remember that you have to take care of yourself. Did it ever occur to you that you might catch a chill?”

      Andrea laughed, stretched out her legs and wriggled her toes. “It’s at least ninety degrees. The humidity is close to one-hundred percent. I seriously doubt I have to worry about getting a chill.”

      “Your resistance is down.”

      “Not after a single treatment. Later, yes. But not now. As a matter of fact, I feel utterly refreshed. You might want to try it sometime.”

      Madge sighed and carefully removed every strand of corn silk from her manicured fingernails. “I prefer air-conditioning, which you have in your home, in your office and in your car, I might add.”

      “True. But Jane Huxbaugh doesn’t. Try sitting in her living room for an hour like I just did, and you’d run under a sprinkler, too.” She paused. “Although, maybe, you’d change into your bathing suit, and you’d have your matching cover-up and beach sandals with you, too.”

      Madge lowered her eyes. “Go ahead, make fun of me. But even if you’re not going to worry about yourself, that doesn’t mean other people will stop worrying. Or caring,” she whispered.

      Andrea’s heart skipped a beat. “I’m sorry. I’m just teasing. I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings.” She let out a long sigh. “I sounded a little like Jane Huxbaugh, didn’t I? I guess I was with her a little too long today.”

      Madge chuckled and leaned back in her chair. “That’s okay. Anyone who spends an hour alone with Jane Huxbaugh deserves a medal. I sure wish I knew what made that woman so miserable. Brenna told me just the other day that none of the other volunteers at the thrift store want to work with Jane in the afternoons. Some of the customers have complained about her, too.”

      Andrea steepled her hands on her lap. “Disappointment can eat away at a person until there’s nothing left but bitterness that taints everything beautiful in this world. Without faith, there’s nothing. No friends. No hope. Not even any joy.”

      “That sums up the Spinster Huxbaugh pretty well,” Madge admitted. “But her fiancé left her at the altar…what? Fifty years ago? I can’t imagine the shame and embarrassment she must have felt at the time. Still, fifty years is a long time to be bitter.”

      “Unfortunately, it hasn’t been long enough. Some people still want to know what happened that day, but she’s never told anyone. I can’t recall her fiancé’s name at the moment, but he left town and no one ever heard from him again.” Andrea did a little mental arithmetic. “I do remember Mother saying Jane was supposed to get married right after her fiancé returned from the war in forty-five. Miss Huxbaugh was nineteen. She’s seventy-seven now. That would be almost sixty years ago.”

      “That’s a lifetime.”

      “Not in our family,” Andrea murmured. She opened