Free Earnest by Kristin von Kreisler Page B

cents a quart; and ham, thirteen cents a pound. James Garfield had been elected U.S. president, and a new steamship was traveling from Gamble to Seattle.
    The time capsule drew Anna close to James Williams and his family. She could almost hear their laughter and their weeping, and feel their spats and disappointments, which lingered in the house. Perhaps members of their family had been born and had died here. Maybe they’d danced to photograph records in the living room and made apple pies in the kitchen. Certainly, the family’s love for each other still hung in the air, just as Anna and Grammy’s did.
    Whenever Anna came to the turret, she felt Grammy’s love as she had when sitting on her lap and leaning back against her chest. “I love you more than the sun and sky and all the flowers on the earth,” Grammy would say as she folded Anna in her arms. “If my love were an ice cream cone, it would be big enough to hold the whole world.”
    Dear house, I can’t let people raze you to the ground. But I’m not sure what to do, Anna thought.
    A little confusion never hurt anybody, the house replied in Anna’s heart—the exact words Grammy would have said.
    What if we try to save you, house, but it all comes to a dead end? Anna asked.
    You have to risk for what you want. You don’t live on an island named Gamble for nothing.
    Anna nodded. That was true.
    As so often happened in the turret, a memory came to Anna as if carried on the wind. One cold fall day she and Grammy had been driving back from a Huskies game. Grammy was cranky because they’d lost, and she kept muttering, “Blast! Drat! Crumb!”
    A mist rolled in, and the windshield wipers squeaked across the glass. As the Chevy traveled along Alaskan Way, wisps of fog swirled before the headlights, slid like ghosts across the hood, and billowed behind the car.
    No matter how hard Anna squinted or how many times she wiped the windshield with her fist, she could see only a few fearsome yards ahead. Grammy must have sensed her apprehension, because she patted her knee. “Don’t worry. If we’re careful, we’ll be all right.”
    â€œI hope,” Anna said.
    To distract her, Grammy launched a philosophical discussion, as she did from time to time. “A drive through fog is like life, you know.”
    â€œHow come?”
    â€œWe’re bumbling along in the car, and we literally can’t see behind or ahead. It’s the same when we go through life. As we muddle day to day, we can’t see the past or future; they exist only in our memory or imagination. All we have to live is the present moment—in life and in this car. Understand?”
    â€œI think,” Anna said.
    â€œI can ponder today’s wretched Huskies score till the cows come home. Same with wondering about next week’s game. What matters is right here, now, with you. The fog forces us to focus on it.”
    Grammy turned up the defroster so the fan whirred behind the dashboard. Anna felt the wipers’ rhythm, steady as a pulse.
    â€œOne thing’s for sure. Surprises are waiting for us out there in the fog of life,” Grammy added. “We must hope for the best and expect even more.”
    That had been Grammy’s mantra. Anna had heard her say it dozens of times. The words echoed in her mind when she got up and cleaned a circle of the turret’s window with her fist, just as she’d cleaned Grammy’s windshield to see out on that long-ago afternoon. For now, when Anna’s future was uncertain, the present seemed a safer place to be. Predicting what lay ahead for herself or the house was as pointless as worrying about it. She’d try to muddle along in the present, a step at a time, and hope for the best. As for expecting even more, she wasn’t sure.

C HAPTER 10
    J eff raised a disapproving eyebrow as he looked around the apartment’s living room. What an awful place.