Seeing Things, page 27
Woof!
I slipped into my painting smock against the seeping chill and covered Suzanne with a blanket. The sky turned soft, and the first star twinkled over Amphitheater Ridge. The crickets chirruped. A breeze lifted the curls from my forehead.
Home.
Epilogue
Had I the slightest inkling how troublesome writing a book would be, I never would have started. Once the folks at Elsie’s Diner found out what I was about, they asked me every single day, “What page are you on, Birdie?” It got so that I wondered if a piece of pie was worth the haranguing they dished out—but only for a minute or two.
Although I learned how to make shu mai, I’ve never seen Huck again—not that I haven’t looked for him, maybe even hoped that I’d see him. I can’t explain his showing up like he did, except that he may have been nothing more than a Charles Bonnet hallucination, at least to start with. What gave him words is something I find myself wondering about whenever I get dirt under my fingernails or come across a fine bolt of calico fabric, something Huck would throw in a ditch but I would use to make a tablecloth, the brighter the better.
I’d like to tell you everything’s hunky-dory with my family, but then I wouldn’t be talking about a family now, would I? Fletcher stayed at home until he graduated from high school, just as he’d planned, then he headed for college in Nebraska of all places. That had something to do with a girl he met in youth group. While at home he butted heads with his father, as sons do, but I never once heard him recite another baseball statistic. I took this as a good sign.
My editor insisted on a touch of romance in my story. Please forgive me for all the tickling tummies and flushed faces, especially for a woman my age, but Emory is almost as good as I portrayed him. Maybe better. Anyhow, I married him when I could walk down the aisle without limping, although the aisle was in a meadow at Carpenter Reservoir. We waited until July for all the snow to melt from under the trees and the wildflowers to bloom.
I’m at least that romantic.
Patti Hill, Seeing Things
