Free Younger Than Yesterday by Harper Bliss

Younger Than Yesterday

    The garden looks beautiful under the setting sun, gorgeous but empty. A lone cricket launches into its raspy evening song, just like every night. The sameness of the days is comforting but sometimes, after dozing off for a brief moment, when I open my eyes, I expect him to sit across from me, his lips curled into a playful smile.
    “You’re getting old, darling,” he would say. “And I had planned to keep you up all night.”
    I put my book down, trying to make it last longer because it’s the only one I brought. Gazing into the black-green of the pine trees hedging off the garden, I let my mind wander freely. I allow myself to think about Michael and the times we spent here. This is his house, after all.
    The loud jeer of my mobile startles me. So much for reminiscing. You can’t really escape life anywhere anymore these days, no matter how remote your Tuscan refuge.
    “Rose, my dear,” John’s voice beams into my ear. “How are you?”
    “Looking forward to hosting you and your lovely wife next week, as ever.” Solitude is good, necessary even, but Helen and John’s annual visit is always a cathartic trip down memory lane. John and Michael were best friends and John, although repeated hundreds of times, has the best stories to tell.
    “Would you mind terribly if our Catherine came along? Her holiday plans with Jenny have fallen through and she’s in desperate need of some healing sunshine.” John’s always been a good sport about Catherine’s misfortunes in romance. Most fathers aren’t half as apt at picking up the pieces of their daughter’s broken heart.
    “Of course not. Tell Cat she’s most welcome.” 
    Despite Michael being Cat’s brother’s godfather, she was his favourite member of the Archer clan. Every year, when John and Helen visited and we sat around the teak garden table, glass in hand and brain pleasantly fogged by alcohol, he would look at the old oak tree in the furthest corner of the yard and recount the story of how Cat climbed all the way up and broke her wrist on her way down. 
    “She was a fearless child,” he would say. “Just like me.” He’d peer deep into Helen’s glazed-over eyes and taunt her. “If I didn’t know any better, I’d say she was mine.” He’d wink and Helen would never know what to say. “Billy stood watching at the bottom of the tree as his sister conquered it with her tiny little hands and feet, agile as a cat. Good name choice by the way.” He’d smack John on the thigh. “And then she went flying. It must have only taken two seconds but I remember it in slow-motion. Her red t-shirt flashing between branches on the way down. The soft thud and crack with which she landed on the grass. The slight tremble of her bottom lip as she fought back the tears.” He’d shake his head and smile. “Such a rascal.”
    “I should have known there and then she wasn’t like other girls,” Helen had said the last summer we were all together at the villa, two months before Michael’s heart attack. She was never good at hiding the disappointment in her voice.
    “Honestly, Helen,” Michael butted in, louder than was necessary but unable to conceal his anger. “A little acceptance goes a long way.”
    Spurred on by the alcohol in her blood, Helen lashed out. “You may think she’s yours. But she’s not, so mind your own business.”
    John, always fiercely protective of his youngest child, rose to his feet and shot them both his well-practiced headmaster look. “Enough.” That usually put a stop to the perpetual row between Michael and Helen about Cat’s sexuality. Frankly, I never understood what all the fuss was about, then again, Helen has more than a decade on me—more than ten years to grow more ignorant, even when it concerns her own daughter.
    Long after I put down the phone I contemplate the special relationship Michael had with Cat. They were always whispering in a corner, up to no good, plotting ways to get on