The Heiress

by Rachel Hawkins

Shocking how soon the “too late now” part of your life arrives. When you’re young, there’s nothing but possibility, just an endless line of tomorrows, and then you wake up one day and realize that no, you cannot move to Paris on a whim because so many of those old buildings don’t have elevators and stairs are hell on your knees now. And besides, you never learned to speak French, and now your brain, once so fresh and spongy and ready to soak up knowledge, feels about as pliable as a peach pit.

I looked like a fucking ventriloquist’s dummy who’d come to life in an assisted-living facility. No basketball was going to undo that.

I blinked at him, confused. He was still smiling, but there was poison in the words, hidden darts. I could sense it, but I didn’t understand it. I didn’t know the dangers that followed that tone of voice.

The quiet wraps itself around me like a cozy quilt, the soft gray of the sky giving way to a hazy blue as the sun begins to burn off the mist, and I want to start every day of my life like this, serenely gazing out at this view, knowing it belongs to me.

one of the baristas at the coffee shop closest to our house has figured out what we always order (me, hazelnut latte with oat milk; Cam, a plain black coffee that always smells, and I assume tastes, like burnt sadness).

but I don’t trust a man whose teeth glow in the dark.”

Ah, yes, the sink. The one in our master bathroom that had clearly been installed sometime in the mid-eighties and featured a truly bizarre red swirl in the marble, making it look like Lady Macbeth had just been washing her hands.

Did I think we’d be happy? Did I think it could last? I’m not sure I was thinking at all, honestly. I know Roddy wasn’t.