The summer after Astrid Dinwiddie's junior year in high school, her parents send her to the charming city of Portland, Maine to look after her grandparents. Astrid loves her grandparents, but is entirely unenthusiastic about being uprooted from the...
It was 7:30 A.M when Astrid left Gene's store. The last time she spent an hour in the store was when she took it upon herself to alphabetize Gene's canned goods. Damn, this woman must be something special, Astrid realized. The veil of darkness over the town had lifted while she was in the store, and now the sun bathed her surroundings in pale yellow. Hasn't changed a bit, she thought as she made her way home.
Other residents of the town had begun to emerge from their burrows to retrieve the Sunday paper. It was refreshing to see old-fashioned newsprint; nobody in Houston subscribed to the Houston Chronicle anymore because they could get their news online. However, in smaller states, especially in the suburbs, the Sunday paper was still popular and thirty-year-olds, clad in their fuzzy bathrobes and slippers, made their way to the porch with mugs of coffee in hand to retrieve it.
Astrid, however, preferred bare feet and her white flannel pajamas decorated with ice skating penguins. She used her free hand to scoop up the paper as she entered her large blue house.
The teenager felt that the size of the home was frivolous for a family of three, let alone for a lone seventeen-year-old. It stood two stories tall and had served as her summer home for as long as she could remember. The entry showcased an ornate granite staircase and a classical parlor for receiving guests; her mother loved to entertain. The parlor connected to a lavish sitting room, the dining room, an expansive library, and a gourmet kitchen.
Astrid haphazardly threw her house keys at the polished mahogany table by the door, She missed her target completely and knocked down a picture frame in the process. Oops, she shrugged, there's a reason I don't play sports anymore. The paper bags grew heavier by the minute and threatened to slip out of her small hands. She stumbled past the staircase and into the kitchen in the nick of time, sprawling the bags across the pristine marble island.
Astrid let out a huff of impatience at her growing to-do list. She hadn't even finished unpacking the few boxes she'd carried in last night, and they were currently blocking all traffic to one of the upstairs hallways.
It took Astrid only fifteen minutes to coat both herself and the kitchen in flour and another hour to bake the southern treat for her Nan. Her tan skin shone with sweat and oil, untamed brown locks glued to her large forehead. The girl's valiant attempt to scrub off her newest layer of "skin" proved fruitless and she made the executive decision to brave her Nan's wrath with a warm cobbler rather than a cold one.
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Astrid didn't bother to lock the heavy front door as it shut behind her, her grandparents' pale yellow house was across the street and far more welcoming than her own. The smaller house was her mother's childhood home, and Nan insisted that she couldn't move halfway across the country without leaving permanent roots back in Portland as well.
A few years later, her mother bought the two homes across the street from her grandparents, knocked everything down and built a mansion from the ground up—Nan's home had never been extravagant enough for her mother's taste. Its location wasn't chosen out of familial love either.
