The Road to Dalton by Shannon Bowring

Author:Shannon Bowring
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Europa Editions
Published: 2023-04-03T00:00:00+00:00

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Most of the time, Trudy is incensed that the library is only open Monday through Thursday. “People like to read on weekends, too, you know,” she’d protested when Ollie Levasseur proposed cutting the library’s funding a few years ago.

But today, this muggy Friday morning, she’s relieved she doesn’t have to go to the library. She’d be no use there today anyway, distracted and fidgety as she’s been since Mycroft woke her up by batting at her cheek with those big white paws. She’s got to keep herself busy here at home until she meets Bev at Frenchie’s at 5:00. Finish cleaning, balance the checkbook. Weed the garden, water the garden.

It’s not until Trudy’s kneeling in the sunshine, hands coated in dirt, that her nerves finally settle. The asters are still going strong, but the hydrangeas have begun to fade, pink petals turning pale green, brittle. Honeybees and butterflies flit around the heliopsis; in the pines, sparrows try to sing louder than the heat bugs. The air is thick and pungent with the growth and decay of mid-August.

Most people assume she’s just a bitter, middle-aged librarian, brandishing overdue slips and shushing patrons. And true, she may be a little impatient. Maybe a lot impatient. But she’s never shushed anyone in her life. And she often waives overdue fines if the person is polite. Almost always if the person is a regular and forgot to return the book because of a sick kid, or a job that takes up fourteen hours of their day.

The real problem, Trudy suspects, the real reason she has a “bit of a reputation,” as Bev puts it, is that she’s not afraid to voice a strong opinion. And despite the fact that it’s 1990, for Chrissake, and the world has supposedly made all sorts of progress, a woman with a mind of her own is still considered problematic. The fact that she and Richard never had kids doesn’t help. No one comes right out and says so, but a woman who chooses not to have children can’t be trusted, not completely.

But look at these flowers. The bees, the birds, the butterflies. Is this not another way of creating life?

Inside the house, the phone rings. Trudy checks the sun in the blue-white sky—almost noon. No doubt it’s Richard, calling on his lunch break to ask her something foolish. Did you pay the water bill? Do we need milk? What was the name of that agent at the insurance office in Prescott, the one who smelled like pickles?

All the familiar questions of a marriage.

Sweat rolls down Trudy’s spine, under the droopy cotton of her bra. Her back aches from pulling weeds, and there’s an empty pang in her belly that reminds her she hasn’t eaten anything since her toast this morning. The phone keeps ringing, but she stays with her flowers. To hell with it. To hell with it all.

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