Project Hannibal Kathryn Hoff (best free e book reader TXT) 📖

wrapped the cuff around Annie’s thin arm. “How you been feeling, Miss Annie?”

“Oh, I’m doing just fine.”

That was always her answer, at least at first. Annie claimed to be seventy-three. Her husband had died two years ago of alcohol-related liver failure. Their only son who’d lived to adulthood, the one whose room Annie now lent to visitors, had joined the army and died in Afghanistan, leaving her without grandchildren to look after her.

Estelle listened to Annie’s heart, heard the ragged sound of a valve that no longer did its job, and noted the swelling of her ankles. It wasn’t that her heart muscle wasn’t strong: it beat reliably, but with the leaky valve, the blood wasn’t getting the push it needed to circulate well.

A bolt of lightning lit the window. Thunder cracked and the first spate of hard rain came down in a heavy gust.

Estelle was happy she had no need to fly in this weather. She was even nervous with the plane on the ground—she’d doubled the ropes on the Cessna’s tie-downs and cinched them as tight as she could. An Alaska Eagle colleague—now an ex-colleague—had once been careless about mooring his plane, and a strong wind had flipped it like a flapjack.

Annie looked anxiously toward the porch. “She’ll get wet. The TV man said this could be more rain than we’ve had all year.”

“Don’t worry about Sera.” Estelle entered Annie’s vital signs into her tablet. “In Louisiana in summertime, we’d get storms like this every day. Have you been able to get out and about a little when the days are nice? Been to church?”

Annie bit her lip. “Well, I just get so tired, you see.”

That meant no. A blanket was bundled onto a chair within Annie’s reach, and a few clothes were stacked nearby. Annie must have stopped going up the steps to her bedroom and was sleeping in her recliner.

“You’ll feel better, once you have the surgery,” Estelle said. “With a new heart valve, you’ll feel like a new woman.”

“Are you sure it’s the right thing to do?” Annie gazed at her cozy room. “I haven’t left Rainbow for more than ten years. I don’t really care for flying, you know.”

“Then maybe it’s about time you saw more of the world. The flight’s only a couple of hours. You can do that, can’t you? Put up with two hours in a plane to get your old energy back? You’ll be able to take care of yourself, walk to church, and work in your garden.”

Annie nodded. “I’d like that. I hate being old.” She looked up with a twinkle in her eye. “Maybe I’ll look out for a new husband in Fairbanks, too. If I’m going to be feeling young again, I might want a man around the house. Wouldn’t that make the village talk!”

Estelle found Sera on the porch, rocking and smiling at the rain. “I love watching a storm,” Sera said.

The rain pelted down, bouncing off the porch steps, broadening the street puddles into lakes.

“Me, too.” Estelle leaned against the log wall. “When I was a girl, I’d sit by the window and watch the dark clouds roll in, guessing how long it would be until I saw the first lightning. Then I’d count the seconds until the thunder. The rain would come down in buckets, then in an hour or a day, it would all be over and the sun would shine again. It always made me feel hopeful, like the rain could wash away some of the anger and misery in people’s lives and give everyone a fresh start.”

Sera scrunched her nose. “Mom never felt that way. She’d say, ‘Come away from the window, baby. It makes me nervous.’ Everything made Mom nervous, but storms especially.”

“And did you?” Estelle asked softly. “Come away from the window?”

“Of course I did. I knew . . .”

For a moment, the only sound was the rain pattering on the porch roof.

“You knew she was vulnerable,” Estelle said. “You did everything you could to help her cope. You said you don’t like people tiptoeing around you, treating you like a bomb that’s about to blow up. But I’ll bet that’s exactly how you spent your days with Marie: tiptoeing around her moods, trying to cheer her up, trying not to upset her.”

“She . . . she had enough problems. I wanted to make things easier for her.”

“Of course you did, chérie. But I’m sure the grief counselor told you—Marie’s problems were deep inside her. Nothing you did caused them. Nothing you did could cure them.”

“Sometimes I hate her,” Sera said, so low Estelle almost didn’t hear. “I can’t believe she did this to me. Left me.”

Estelle started to make excuses for Marie—she was sick, it wasn’t you she was trying to hurt—but caught herself in time. “You’re angry,” she said instead—an invitation for Sera to vent.

“Damn right I am! She should be here. She should be checking my homework, telling me not to stay out late, and making me change my dress for church. She should be telling me my boyfriend’s no good or my hair needs braiding. That’s what mothers are supposed to do, isn’t it?” She paused long enough to sniff. “I was a good girl, all the time. All my life, I tried to cheer her up, not make trouble, so she’d be happy! Why couldn’t she just be happy?”

Sera’s face crumpled. The grief that had hovered just under the surface for days rose like floodwaters. Estelle gathered her in her arms as sobs shook the girl’s shoulders.

“It wasn’t your fault, Sera.”

“I tried,” Sera whispered. “I tried to help her.”

“I know,” Estelle said. “I’ve seen how hard you try. You try to stay out of the way, not to cause trouble. You went along with the sightseeing because I asked you to. You came to Rainbow because I insisted, and didn’t