The Lemoncholy Life of Annie Aster Read online

  “Hey!” He eased up on the accelerator to pull into a makeshift parking space at the base of World War II bunkers that looked like metal boxes unceremoniously shoved into the ground and peered over the dash at the horizon. “Just in time,” he said. Throwing the door open, he took in a deep breath before wandering to the back to open the tailgate.

  Leaving him to it, Christian gingerly ascended a set of cement stairs on the side of one of the bunkers and stopped to ponder monstrous iron bolts jutting from the ground—all that remained of turret guns that once guarded the bay. He wandered to the edge of the cliff. A sea-born gust rocked him, and he wrapped his arms across his chest, craning his neck over the edge to catch a glimpse of the beach far below. From that angle, the sun appeared to float on the open water like an inflatable ball. Chuckling, he cocked his finger as if to thump the glowing orb, then looked over his shoulder to find Edmond lugging a couple grocery sacks and a blanket around the front of a bunker.

  “Christian! A little help?”

  Christian blanched. “Not now,” he whispered, banishing the angel that was dangling its legs directly above Edmond’s head, and dashed over to scoop up the grocery sacks.

  The flame that had bathed the angel was slower to dwindle, and Christian wondered if Edmond could feel the residual heat as he leveraged himself onto the roof. He seemed no worse for wear, however, as he slung plates, sandwiches, tabbouleh, and deviled eggs over the blanket with a reckless abandon that seemed on the verge of—but never quite meeting—disaster.

  When Christian settled onto the blanket next to him, Edmond pulled the cork on a bottle of wine and poured two glasses. “What were you looking at?” he asked.

  Having dismissed the angel, Christian had to take a second. He shook his head.

  “You were looking at something.” When Christian seemed unwilling to respond, he handed him a glass. “Okay then, here’s to the city by the bay, the most beautiful city in the world.”

  “To San Frannn-cisco,” Christian said. After a quick sip, he put down his drink, his eye drawn to a poppy growing from a crack in the bunker’s roof. He pulled it and stared across the water at the skyline, determined that the uninvited guest wasn’t going to ruin his fun.

  The sun was a copper-colored sliver sinking into the bay by this time, its waning glimmer leaving the lights of the city to look like a fine spray of luminous paint on the far shore.

  Five pelicans soared along the rise of the cliff in a broken vee formation.

  Edmond nudged Christian with his foot. “Did I catch you praying in the truck?” he asked. His question was meant as a joke, but it flustered Christian nonetheless.

  He shook his head. “No, I’m not much for prayer anymore,” he said as he set the flower aside. “Used to, but not anymore.”

  “Used to? Why did you stop?”

  Christian shrugged. “When I no longer understood what I was praying for,” he said, as if the answer should have been obvious.

  Edmond stared openmouthed, waiting to see if more was forthcoming, but Christian simply turned his gaze skyward as stars broke around them one at a time—phosphorescent cherry blossoms pinned to an indigo silk sky. The Big Dipper glimmered just over his shoulder, ladling out just enough mystery to leave Edmond scratching his head. “Beautiful, aren’t they?” he said.

  Like a kid caught stealing a cookie, Christian broke from his trance, grinning to mask his embarrassment. He leaned back on both elbows with his legs splayed out in front of his body. “This is nice,” he said. “Down there”—he gestured toward the skyline with his foot—“it’s almost as if the plane I live on is out of alignment and I disappear.” He looked across his shoulder at Edmond. “Know what I mean?”

  “No, but I don’t understand half the things you say, to be honest.” Shoving his plate out of the way, Edmond lay on his side, his head braced in the palm of his hand, and watched Christian flick the flower off the side of the bunker. “However, in spite of the fact that we seem to speak two different languages, I think I’m beginning to figure you out,” he said.

  Christian watched the flower tumble into the weeds below and, after a moment, returned Edmond’s scrutiny. “What happened, Edmond?” he asked, the question coming out of nowhere like a pint-sized stealth bomber.

  “What do you mean?”

  “To you. Something bad happened, and you lost your way, I think.”

  Edmond’s instincts fought against his flair for sarcasm. It was a fair question that deserved an honest response. But how could he explain his past to an innocent? For that’s surely what Christian was. Some people were locked into innocence by their very nature. How then could he explain the rebellion against his strict, Catholic upbringing in a way Christian could understand? And how that rebellion was alchemized through a dare and a joint, taking him down a perilous road of ever-greater risks, and how that led to something, something terrible—something he didn’t think Christian could understand.

  Everyone had secrets; he knew that. But his demanded atonement and explanations he wasn’t ready to offer, so he simply said, “I made some mistakes. I’m paying for them now.”

  Christian seemed to worry the statement around in his head for a moment. “I’m…I’m sorry.”

  He sounded so sincere that Edmond could only shake his head, almost undone by such gentle clemency. “Don’t be. I’m fine.” Struggling for composure, he shifted the focus back to Christian. “What about you?” he asked.

  “What do you want to know?”

  “Tell me something you’ve never shared with anyone.” He shoveled some tabbouleh into his mouth before waving his spoon at Christian. “Why did you leave Texas, for instance?”

  “Oh.” Christian rocked his head back between his shoulder blades and stared heavenward. “I suppose I ran away from expectations I couldn’t live up to,” he said, palming his napkin before a gust of wind could carry it away.

  “Because you stutter?”

  “In part.” Christian picked up his sandwich and took a bite. His eyes widened, and before he could ask, Edmond said, “Fennel.” He watched Christian chew in silence.

  The piercing call of a hawk sounded somewhere behind them.

  “I miss the hand gestures.”

  Christian paused midchew, blinking, and Edmond cleared his throat. “You know, when you stutter?” he said. “It’s beautiful. Your hands…they write in the air, and you move your fingers like this.” He twiddled his and gave up. “I–I can’t do it like you.”

  The comment was so unexpected, so sweetly outrageous, that Christian laughed—a reflexive bark that ended on a note of incredulity. His cheeks flooded with color, red as rouge. And in the awkward hush that followed, when he needed a distraction, Christian did the strangest thing. Setting the sandwich carefully on his plate, he grabbed a toothpick and started jabbing at it, a behavior Edmond remembered from their first encounter that seemed to indicate Christian’s emotions were very close to the surface. “No one’s ever said that to me before.”

  “Well, they should,” Edmond mumbled.

  The sandwich was a sad shadow of its former self by the time Christian was through with it. He balled his hand around the toothpick, staring at the damage as he struggled to make sense of the random comment—the idea that someone, anyone, could make him feel almost at ease with his strange affliction, and that it ended up being the very person who’d so unsettled him to begin with.

  He would have liked to share that insight with Edmond, but he knew it was wound so tightly with a net of conflicting emotions that the words would come out in a nonsensical pile. Instead, he decided to attack an even trickier problem. “I n-nneed to ask you some…thing.” He resumed jabbing in the hope that the repetitive nature of the exercise would clear his mind and lubricate his voice. “And it would really help if you took it seriously.” He waited for Edmond to lower his spoon. “Have we—have we met before?”

  Edmond shook his head, not understanding the question.

  “Before we met, I
mean.” Christian grimaced, knowing full well that the last remark only made sense in his mind. He stood and shoved his hands in his pockets.And just as quickly,he sat back down, crossing his legs in front of him. “There are some—” He looked over the water, his legs bouncing—up and down, up and down.

  Alarmed, Edmond reached over to place a hand on his knee, and Christian smiled. “There are some gaps in my memory, you see. I had an accident.” He shrugged, as if happy to get the words out, yet at a loss to explain why they had been so difficult for him to say in the first place. “Would you mind if I don’t talk about it?” He shook his head. “I–I don’t like talking about it.”

  Edmond lifted his brow before wisely popping half a deviled egg in his mouth. Something clicked inside his head as he chewed, however, like connecting that crucial dot to reveal a disastrous picture, and an involuntary intake of air left him choking.

  Christian sprang to his side, pounding Edmond’s back as he rolled onto his hands and knees. He tried to talk, to wave him off, but it only left him with a coughing fit so intense he retched. Exhausted, he rolled onto his back to peer at Christian with a fresh set of eyes. “My God,” he whispered, blinking. It was more a verbal spasm than anything else, breaking from his mouth like speaker feedback.

  It was that moment, as nitro blasted in his belly, when Edmond knew the stakes had been raised and that he was on a collision course with a confession. He sat up, stymieing the impulse to walk off, to deal with the rush of insight and its implications in peace and quiet. If he did, he’d have to come back and explain why his reaction seemed out of proportion to Christian’s disclosure, and that was out of the question.

  To his credit, Christian seemed to take it all in stride, settling back onto the blanket a few feet across from Edmond—a distance that might as well have been a mile for all that had just occurred.

  Edmond shoved the other half of the egg into his mouth, consciously forcing himself to chew as he looked for a topic that would bring them back to safer ground. Not certain what that would be, and with the silence becoming unbearable, he simply took a punt. “Tell me about your family.”

  Christian reached for the toothpick, but Edmond saw the signs and got there first, snatching it from the plate.

  “You”—he shook a finger—“stop that!”

  Christian started, and Edmond sighed, regretting his outburst. “You’re so comfortable with loneliness. As if you think you deserve it.” He shoved the toothpick in his own mouth, assessing the situation. “That’s not right.” Getting back to the immediate topic, he said, “Your family?”

  “I don’t like talking about that either—”

  “Well then, what do you want to talk about?” Edmond barked, exasperated. He put a hand over his mouth and breathed. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry.” After a moment, the hand fell to his side, seemingly of its own accord. “You can be really frustrating, you know that?” he said. “Open up a little. You’re safe.” When Christian made eye contact, he nodded. “You are.”

  The plea was so earnest that Christian relented. Fighting against his instincts, he offered up a little piece of himself. “I’d like to be a writer,” he said quietly.

  Edmond looked up. That was not at all what he expected. “Write? Write what?”

  If ever there was a time for levity, this was it, so Christian gave it a whirl. “Obituaries, Hallmark jingles, fortune cookies, maybe even a satanic verse or two.” He shrugged. “Failing that, I might try my hand at a…book.”

  The ploy succeeded. After the initial shock wore off, Edmond reeled his head back and howled. “A joke? Christian’s first joke!” Jerking his leg out of the way just as Christian attempted to kick it, he added, “Who would have thought that quiet little Christian would be hiding such ambition?”

  He laughed so hard he almost choked on his food a second time as he unsuccessfully tried to dodge another shot while adding, “And… Ow! Here I am laying manure… Shit, that hurt! On roses for a living. But gardening is a noble cause, nonetheless.” He waited breathlessly for Christian to settle down, then slapped his thigh and nodded toward the harvest moon rising over the water. “You have the floor.”

  “What?” Christian recoiled. “Nooooo,” he said and sat up, crossing his legs—all business. “Uh-uh. I’m not drunk this time. Thanks for the hangover, by the way. It was my f-first.”

  Edmond gazed under his lids at Christian. “Wasn’t it Hemingway who said there’s nothing to writing? That all you have to do is sit at a typewriter and bleed? Consider me a blank page. Go on, I can take it.”

  Clearly, that hit a nerve. Christian let out a breath of air and lay back on the blanket, crossing his hands behind his head.

  As Edmond settled in, Christian shifted his gaze to the stars littering the night sky. Then, in a strange gesture, he swept his hand above his face as if to collect them in his closed palm, then flicked his wrist as if to scatter them about, creating a pattern more to his liking.

  “Annie—our heroine—lives in a beautiful Victorian just off Dolores Street in San Francisco. This is no ordinary house, however. It has a secret. Walking in Annie’s front door is one thing. Walking out her back door is something altogether different. Do so and you will discover that hers is not surrounded by other houses, as one would expect in a city like San Francisco. Instead, you will find that her home floats in a sea of wheat.” He broke from his narrative long enough to take a sip of wine. “Nearby, a dirt road runs through the wheat, and on the road is a sign. It says ‘Pawnee County, Kansas. Population 673. Five Miles Due East of Sage as the Crow Flies.’”

  Immersed in his tale, Christian didn’t notice Edmond stir, propping himself up on his elbow.

  “Annie has a neighbor in this wheat field. She lives in a little cabin on the horizon with smoke continually floating up from a corner of its roof. Annie’s never met her neighbor, but they’ve exchanged many letters. And always, Annie’s neighbor dates her correspondence in the year 1895. Her name is Elsbeth…”

  “Grundy?” Edmond interrupted, wide- eyed, effectively shutting Christian up. “Mind if I interrupt with a story of my own?” he added, when it became clear Christian couldn’t continue.

  Christian shook his head emphatically, then seeing the expression on Edmond’s face from the corner of his eye, slowly nodded.

  “It begins with a book I found in the library— ”

  CHAPTER

  TWENTY

  Bearer Bonds

  The sun was setting, and Elsbeth sat in her rocker, reading Annie’s letter a second time. Key words seemed to lift from the page and flutter like moths in the mustardy light of the lantern sitting on the table. Mess. Daughter. Revenge.

  She finally settled on one sentence, reading it over and over again. But you are my friend! Annie didn’t know the half of it. And neither had she, until she read Annie’s news. For the second time that day, Elsbeth reached for her writing set.

  May 30th, 1895

  Dear Annie,

  That cotton- picking diary! I had a feeling it would be nothing but trouble. Now listen to me before going off to do something half-cocked!

  I’m quite possibly more shocked by the news than you because of something I chose not to share in my last correspondence. It was, I thought, nobody’s damn business but my own! But I see I was wrong.

  Before exiting Mr. Abbott’s home, I came across a photograph of his wife. He called her Florence in his diary, but I knew her by another name. I mentioned it in a previous correspondence. Beth Anne. She was my daughter.

  If the natural consequence of this is not immediately clear, then let me state it simply.

  Annie, you are my granddaughter! And Beth Anne was your mother.

  I’ll grieve for her as I may, but, truthfully, I did most of my grieving long ago. We did not part on good terms, your mother and I. It was a case of my infamous temper butting heads with her colossal stubbornness. I loved her fiercely, and that, I’m afraid, drove her away. I was overprotective and smothered her aft
er her father died.

  You should know some things. She loved honeysuckle, having gotten it in her head from some foolishness her father told her that all honeysuckle vines were gates to the fairy kingdom. Chess was her favorite game. She and Tom would play for hours with a set he carved for her. And crows were her favorite birds. She told me they were her “totem,” her guardian angels.

  There is much more than coincidence happening here, Annie, and in some strange way, it’s beginning to make sense. We were meant to find each other. It comforts me to think there is some agency looking over us, giving me a second chance to love someone more perfectly.

  Love,

  Your grandmother

  P.S. Stay put, damn it!

  Elsbeth reread the letter and stepped outside to deliver it. It was dark, but she didn’t need the light. El knew the way by heart.

  “You’re still up,” Christian said as he bounced into Annie’s kitchen, throwing a spray of wilted poppies onto the counter. “Sorry I’m so late, but Edmond’s rear bumper came off on the Golden Gate Bridge. If you ask me, it was a botched suicide attempt.That truck’s time has come and it knows it.” He shook his head, chuckling at his own joke. “Edmond’s in mourning. What?” That final word— what—flowed from his mouth so seamlessly it could have been mistaken for the last syllable of the prior word. Mourningwhat. But it was actually his knee-jerk response to the fact that Annie was pacing back and forth with her father’s diary in one hand and a letter in the other.

  After a second, she handed Christian the letter and wandered to the sink to rinse out a mug.

  “Good God,” he said, collapsing onto a bench in the breakfast nook. “This changes everything.”

  Annie nodded as she reached for a dish towel. “Murder was a hanging offense in Kansas at the turn of the century.”