CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
“You know what I definitely don’t miss about New York?”
Veronica swayed slightly in the hammock strung between two stolid oaks in Keith’s backyard, a finger stuck between the pages where she’d been leafing through Aurora Scott’s diary. It was just after dinner, and the last of the day’s sun filtered gently through the leaves.
Keith looked up at her from where he crouched, yanking weeds from around the agapanthus. Their dirty dishes and the remainder of their lasagna sat on the little wooden table on the patio; they’d come out to enjoy the evening while they ate, a well-earned break.
“I’ve heard the sewer alligators are very intimidating,” he said, wiping beads of sweat from his brow.
She leaned back in the canvas of the hammock, enjoying the sense of being supported.
“I don’t miss crummy little apartments without yards or gardens or windows that open. I definitely don’t miss that.”
It was her favorite part of Keith’s house—the yard. When she’d been in high school, after the recall election in which they’d lost everything, they’d made their home in an apartment, less crummy and less little than anywhere she’d lived in Manhattan, but definitely not anyone’s picture of the good life. It’d been comfortable, though, and it’d been theirs, back when it was the two of them against the world. And at least there’d been a courtyard with a pool where she could sit and get some air.
But it was a true luxury to be able to sit in a little patch of garden while the light faded, to take charge of the weeds in the garden, to swing gently between oaks older than she was.
“Oh yeah? You might miss it more after cutting the grass every weekend for a few months.” He glanced up at her from where he knelt, his mouth twisted wryly.
“Hm. I was thinking about adopting more of a supervisory position when it came to yard work. But I’ll bring you lemonade between mowings.”
He tugged a tough, sinewy weed from the soil. Its roots were dense and gnarled.
“What’s that you’re reading?”
She held up the little book. “Aurora’s diary. Last entry is a little over a year ago, so it might not be the most up-to-date information. But it’s somewhere to start.”
The diary was actually a sketchbook, filled with line after line of wide, looping handwriting in multiple colors of ink. Sketches and doodles showed up throughout in pencil—a cartoon Frankenstein’s monster shambling his way across the page, a perfectly shaded picture of a flower in a vase, an abstract doodle illuminating the margins. Aurora was a good artist. Sometimes the text ran in straightforward lines, but sometimes she’d turned the diary sideways or wrote in weird curlicues that spiraled around her drawings.
Can’t stand another day around the dead-eyed zombie hordes.
Every time Mrs. Nelson mispronounces the word “chlamydia” in health class, an angel gets its wings. Or maybe it just gets chlamydia?
Got a drug and alcohol lecture today from the arch-hypocrite himself. Does AA make you retarded, or did he kill all his fucking brain cells before that?