Total pages in book: 60
Estimated words: 56651 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 283(@200wpm)___ 227(@250wpm)___ 189(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 56651 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 283(@200wpm)___ 227(@250wpm)___ 189(@300wpm)
But I was getting nervous. There was an unsettled feeling in my stomach sometimes when I walked in the door. In the parking lot of the complex. And especially when I went into the belly of the main building, doing laundry or dropping off my garbage and recycling.
Maybe it was time to move.
I sighed at the thought. I’d barely been here a year. I still had a few months on the lease.
And I liked the apartment, I grumbled to myself. It wasn’t luxurious, but it was clean and nice enough. It had a cute little patio, decent light, and some lovely neighbors. And it was mine.
It was close to Auntie and close to my new job. I could sit outside on the patio and sip my coffee on my off days. On the days I was working I usually left left before the sun came up, and drank the terrible hospital coffee. I had a terrific old coffee maker I loved, and wasn’t the sort to go out for the gourmet stuff. That was an expense I definitely could not afford.
Even when I could someday, when I was head nurse and raking in the bucks, I probably wouldn’t. My thrift store coffee percolator did just fine. And it was satisfying to know I could make it myself, when I needed it, for pennies, and somehow it always tasted great.
But fancy food? That I would definitely indulge in once in a while. Good food, and maybe some nice clothes. Nothing extravagant. But some girly stuff I felt pretty in, I thought dreamily. Feminine things a girl could wear out to dinner, to a concert, or to the theater. Something nice to wear when I took Auntie out for a nice brunch…
I’d never really had anything special to wear. It would be a sign I had made it. And it would happen.
All in due time.
I just had to keep my head down and work, pay my dues and pay my bills, and I would get there. I had ambitions. I had goals.
Then maybe, I could finally start to pay my sweet aunt back for everything she had done for me. She hadn’t asked to raise her baby sister’s child after my mother died in a tragic accident. Her relationship to my father hadn’t been easy or lasted long. As a single mother, there was no safety net for me. No family. Just an independent older sister without kids of her own. But Auntie had done it. She’d stepped right up to the plate, took me under her wing, and done it with love, a firm hand, and zero complaints.
With Auntie, I would have wound up in the system. An orphanage. Foster care. The lord knows what might have happened. Instead I had been raised with love, tenderness, a strict moral compass, and a firm hand that had given me a work ethic that had served me to this day.
I owed her everything. Literally everything. And some day, I would start to pay her back.
Not that Auntie would let me give her money. She was too proud for that, and too frugal to not have more than a little money squirreled away for a rainy day. She had raised me on a meager salary and somehow done it with style and grace. But she would let me take her out to lunch once a week after church… buy her flowers once in a while… bring her favorite chocolates to the home she shared with the absolutely fabulous, feisty group of older women from the neighborhood.
All the them had lost their husbands, or like Auntie, never been married. Some had kids, and grandkids, some didn’t. Either way, they were mostly on their own. So instead of living alone, they had rented a big old house together. It was not in the fanciest area, or in the best repair, but the feeling of warmth, of coming home, when you walked up the walkway to the wraparound porch was hard to beat.
Maybe it was the way the garden flourished under their experienced attention. Or the keepsakes, antiques, soft rugs, and handmade curtains that festooned the halls. Or the smell of something delicious on the stove, or in the oven, at almost anytime of day. Or the sound of old timey music playing on the piano, the radio, or the old school stereo unit, complete with turntable, that often had the aunties getting up from their easy chairs to dance around. Or the joy on their sweet, worn faces when they spotted me walking in the front door. Or the ‘heya sweetheart’s that rang out when they heard me call out when I came in without knocking, as I had been ordered to do.
It’s not like they couldn’t hear me. Even the ones who used hearing aids. That front door creaked.