Chapter 4-3
1090 Words
“It’s all yours,” Susan had said, and when Penny only continued to gape at her, Susan elaborated.
“This house, this land, has been in your family for generations.” Susan draped an arm casually over Penny’s shoulder.
Penny had to fight an urge to shrug the arm away. This kind of casual affection was a new thing for her. “How big is it?”
“Pretty big. You own as far as the eye can see behind the house, and in front,” she pointed into the distance past the driveway, “all the way up that hill to Little Canyon Creek. The creek is the property line … everything past that belongs to the state.”
Penny nodded, trying to hide her astonishment at finding out she owned the equivalent of a couple of city blocks. She pulled her mother’s photo from her pocket and held it out to Susan. “I found this.”
Susan nodded and took the picture from Penny’s hand, regarding it fondly. “The attic used to be her room. I stayed in one of the second floor rooms when I was about your age.”
“You lived here too?”
Susan nodded. “My parents died when I was fourteen. It was a bad spring. A lot of rain and flooding. There was a landslide on the highway west of town. Dad must have seen it too late. When he tried to stop their car, he lost control and went in the river.
“There was no one to take care of me after that, so your grandmother took me in.”
Penny turned from Susan and stared at her hands, folded in her lap. She was close to tears again, but they were not precisely tears of sadness or loss this time. There was a touch of the old sadness behind them, but mostly they were tears brought by empathy. Empathy, and strangely enough, hope.
Susan was like her, an orphan with no real family left apart from her sister, but someone had cared for her anyway. Susan had been where she was now, and understood her better than any of the social workers ever could have. Penny couldn’t think of her as a mother, would probably never be able to, but that was okay.
Susan was more like a sister.
It no longer felt to Penny like Susan was letting her stay out of obligation—though she thought part of it was the repaying of an old debt—but because in a way, they were family.
“June, my sister, was eighteen and had her own place by then. She invited me to move in with her, but we never got along. I think she asked because she thought she had to, and she was insulted when I decided to stay with your mom instead.”
“Miss Riggs?” Penny interrupted.
Susan nodded.
“That’s why she doesn’t want me here,” Penny blurted, and immediately regretted it. She had resolved not to make an issue of her argument with Susan’s sister, but now she had brought it up.
Susan seemed unconcerned and unsurprised by this.
“Sorry about that,” she said. “I wanted to pick you up myself, but I had to work. Owning my own business is a dream come true for me, but it means I get to work six days a week.”
Penny nodded her understanding. Her mom had worked long hours and many weekends at the agency in the city. “What kind of shop is it?”
“I own a bookstore,” she said, “but I also sell stationery and office supplies to most of the other businesses in Dogwood. The bookstore would never survive without the office supply side.”
Susan began to rock them in the porch swing. “Living here rent-free helps too.”
Penny relaxed a little now that the conversation had turned away from Miss Riggs. She was more than happy to not have to think about Susan’s nasty-tempered sister.
“Your grandparents died before you were born, so when Diana took you to San Francisco she let me stay as caretaker. I pay the taxes and take care of the place. She willed it to you,” Susan said, “but I’m the executor.”
“It’s all mine?”
“Yes. Once you turn eighteen, you’re free to kick me out, but until then you just have to put up with me,” Susan said with a wink.
“Did you know my father?”
Susan cringed, and the porch swing stopped abruptly as she planted her feet on the floorboards with a loud thump. A tense silence followed as Penny waited for an answer. Any answer.
“I wish I could tell you about him, kiddo,” Susan said at last. She patted Penny’s shoulder, rose, and strode back inside the house, leaving Penny alone to wonder what her father could have done to turn her mom, and it seemed her mom’s friends, so completely against him.
* * * *
Penny stopped walking at intervals to take in new scents, scents she’d never experienced in the city: wildflowers, dew-dampened grass, and acres of wild clover. She walked and walked, paying little attention to her direction. She heard the far off babble of running water, Little Canyon Creek maybe, but couldn’t locate its source.
The mostly flat ground became sloped and rocky; the wild grass and clover thinned, stunted scrub brush and scrawny trees rose up to meet her. She was determined to gain the top of the hill—to look back and see her house from afar.
“Ehem.” The sound of a cleared throat.
Penny jumped back a step, startled, and tottered until she found a handhold on a stunted tree twisting its way out of the ground to her left. She turned her head left, right, then peered down the slope behind her.
“Ah, my apologies, miss. Didn’t mean t’ startle you.”
Penny faced forward again and saw the owner of the voice at the top of the hill, only feet in front of her. A large red fox, sitting on its haunches, its head c****d to one side, and grinning down at her. Penny had seen foxes in books and on TV, but none of them had been this large. None of them had talked, either.
“Uh …” Penny said. “Wha …?”
“I wondered when you’d make it this way. Fancy a chat?”
Penny did not fancy a chat.
Shrieking, she let go of the tree and ran straight down the hill as fast as she had ever run, very lucky to make it to the bottom still on her feet. She ran until the big fox was a speck sitting atop the distant hill. She ran until the hill itself was an indistinct lump in the green distance.
Panting, Penny stomped up the porch steps, threw the front door open, and rushed inside, slamming it shut behind her and locking it.
- Writer
