Two women sat opposite one another in the dusty living room, lit only by the smallest amount of sun that peaked through the cracks in the curtains. The younger of the two, obviously nervous picked at her nails that rested on page upon page of faint, blue lined paper. A notebook the older woman, with a cigarette dangling from her fingers watched the younger woman in awe. The younger woman cleared her throat and pressed the button. Record.
“Start from your earliest memory, I want your story.” She said now filled with confidence, a different side to the woman picking her nails had emerged.
“My story? Oh sweetheart I can’t possibly. It’s vile- no story for a young lady like yourself.” The older woman pursed her lips. “But you already know don’t you?”
The younger smiled and nodded. Of course she’d known, the leather bound diary had been a curiosity for so long.
After a few minutes of silence between the pair, the older woman took a deep breath and sighed.
“My earliest memory would be when I met my ex husband. I was in my teens. Fifteen I believe? My younger brother and I were raised in the outskirts of Boroughsburg, where the noise pollution was tolerable, by our grandmother. My father’s mother. She was the kindest person I’ve ever known, bless her soul.”
“There were always this pair of boys that would skate by my house all hours of the day, and night. They were obviously brothers. They shared the same chocolate brown hair and tanned skin but that was where the similarities ended. One was bigger, tougher a leader of sorts, and the other was his shadow to the most degree, he followed his brother everywhere. But it was in the fall that I’d met my Oddy. I’d been locked out of the house for whatever reason, I was sitting on our front staircase when he came up to me and asked for some change. And I guess saw something he liked in me because he was always waiting for me at the staircase after school. He was always such a gentleman, he’d won my heart, and my Grandma’s too! The old fool she’d be rolling in her grave if she knew the rest of the story.”
She snapped back into reality and looked the younger woman in the eyes. “Are you sure Honey? I’m a terrible person to start this with, my story is dark and vile. You should have started somewhere closer to home. Your Aunt Codie-”
“Codie and I aren’t on speaking terms. Haven’t been for years. Please continue?”
The older woman stubbed out her cigarette in the ashtray without a care in the world. Like she had known all along, the twisted dynamics of the younger woman’s family.
“Fancy a drink? Demeter?” she asked, placing a tumbler of whiskey in front of her anyway. “How’s Grandma?” she coyed and threw back the drink in the familiar way her Grandma did.
“Can we please continue? Tell me a little more about Oddy, how much of his past do you know? Up until the day he met you?” Demeter questioned.
“I don’t know much to be quite frank. We turned a new page once we got to know each other. We’re not the open book type of people… too often at least”
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