In the Days in Between (sample)
Hannah set the VCR for her parents Wednesday night. This was something that nobody else she knew did, not because they didn’t love their folks or didn’t want to help, but because no one else still taped stuff on TV. The program she recorded was a costume drama that ran on the PBS station from ten to eleven at night. She taped this sort of thing for them a lot, whenever new ones rumbled in from overseas, and sometimes they came on even later ‘cause of pledge drives. And either way three times out of four she’d check her work after setting the timer to make sure that she hadn’t screwed it up. “I don’t know what I’ll do when you go off to college,” her mom would sometimes say. “Guess you’ll find out in a couple of months,” Hannah’d said back, one day, which had been three weeks ago. She didn’t say it to be rude, or as a joke. It was simply a factual statement to hang in the air. There hadn’t been a market for jobs for young people that summer, but two times a week Hannah volunteered down at the library. She’d always liked it there, growing up, and the atmosphere suited her. Quiet people. Breathing room. Books. It absorbed her with ease on the Mondays and the Fridays that she went. Sometimes she thought with amusement that she looked the part, with her thick black-rimmed glasses and sensible hair and her vintage dresses just this side of hip. Hannah Byrd even looks like a librarian’s name, she’d tell herself, shelving or filling out forms or doing whatever Mrs. Lesley could find for her as make-work. It was never too busy at the library in summer, except in the children’s room upstairs, where Hannah rarely found the need to go.
Four days a week plus occasional Fridays Ivy Noone had backup duties at the multiplex a few miles out of town, where there was always something to do—fill the tubs and sacks with popcorn, help the cleanup crew after kiddie cartoons. On the days that she worked, she worked late; Hannah’s days began at ten and stopped at five. In the seven-day rotation they had Thursdays together, an overlap of time off which they always spent in tandem, except for one week in early July when Ivy’d had to visit her grandmother. “They’re worried she’s not gonna make it till Christmas,” she had said in explanation, as they sat on the porch of Hannah’s house the prior Wednesday night, drifting deep into the morning. “Or even Thanksgiving. Like I’ll go and she’ll just never see me again.” Hannah let her brain shuffle through some responses before picking one that she thought might be okay.
This concludes the free sample, but you can buy the full story at this link! . . . |