Friday with Friends welcomes CrossRiver Media
Author, Kathy Nickerson!
Audrey Ann
She sat in the bus station and felt
the cold weight in her pocket. She should never have taken it, of course. Her
mother had raised her better than that. But Mrs. Caldicott had been especially
difficult all morning. She had insisted the tea be stirred just so, and she had
complained that the biscuits were too dry. One minute she wanted the window open
for her health and the next minute she wanted it closed because the hydrangea
bush made her sneeze.
Audrey Ann had worked all morning
polishing a drawer of silver and catering to various whims. Somewhere around
midday, she looked up from the yawning drawer and stretched. She glanced down
again at the trays full of silver, which no one ever used. She wished for a
moment that she owned just one small spoon from the collection. She would have
taken it to Grady at the Duncan Street Pawn Shop last night.
Instead, she had sold Grady her ring. Her
mother’s ring, actually. The one with the smooth rubbed edges and the tiny
curling letters along the inside. Because of her visit to Grady’s and the coins
in her pocket, Audrey Ann had been more than a little tempted this morning to
walk right on past the frowning gate of Number Eleven. But, she had taken
herself by the collar and marched herself up the steps and gotten on with it
all.
She tried to be content by
remembering she would finally be able to pay her rent this evening. But then
Mrs. Caldicott had gone on and on about the hydrangea incident and about how
girls from the country could never be counted on to get things right. The final
insult had come when Audrey Ann looked up from the silver collection just in
time to see Mrs. Caldicott squeezing the last drop of tea from her Tuesday bag,
which she insisted must last until Friday. Then she wrapped it carefully in her
napkin lest Audrey Ann try to slip it into her own pocket while clearing away.
Mrs. Caldicott was certain, as she
told everyone, that Audrey Ann stole from her consistently. That was better
than the last girl, though, who had been gradually poisoning her food.
Suddenly, it had all been too much.
Audrey Ann had lifted the heavy spoon and dropped it into her pocket. Now, here
she sat, wondering where she should go. The farm had been sold months ago. She
couldn’t go back there. She would have to go forward, somewhere.
Although she had never owned any
real silver, Audrey Ann was sure the spoon must be worth a large sum of money.
Maybe she should go to Grady’s first. Sell the spoon. Redeem the ring. Then she
would be free.
She would have enough money left over to
escape the city and find a place with trees and hills and birds. Maybe even
cows. She would set herself up in a little cottage and write great novels of
enduring value.
She would go to a place where no one
could scream at her to adjust a window shade just when she had found a minute
to scribble on whatever scrap of paper she had managed to scrounge. She would
buy thick reams of writing paper, and she would crumple them up and throw away
what didn’t suit her without a second thought.
Audrey Ann looked down and touched
the pale band where her mother’s ring should have been. Her ring, actually,
since her mother had died and left it to her. She remembered the time when she
was small, when her mother had promised the ring to her as an inheritance.
Audrey Ann remembered being horrified to think of her mother gone somewhere
unreachable. She wondered what possible importance a ring could have in such
circumstance.
Now that the ring was gone, too, she
understood.
Audrey Ann blinked her eyes to clear
her head. The she began looking at the other people waiting in the station. She
tried to imagine where they might be going and what they might do when they got
there. But the game was no good, because the weight in her pocket grew heavier.
Audrey Ann reminded herself that
Mrs. Caldicott would never know. She would claim Audrey Ann had done worse,
anyway. Then she would hire a new girl, a girl who needed work so badly she
wouldn’t care if it cost her a dream. And it would start all over again.
Audrey Ann was convinced it would have
taken years to earn her way back to the country on the salary Mrs. Caldicott
paid. This was just a harmless little shortcut, like jumping over the creek
instead of going the long way around to the bridge. Mrs. Caldicott would never
miss one small, silver spoon from a house filled with treasure. And she
probably owed the world one great writer in exchange for the meanness she had
contributed over the years. For almost fifteen minutes, Audrey Ann carried on a
pretty good argument with herself.
But, her mother had raised her
better than that.
Finally, Audrey Ann stood up and
fingered the spoon in her pocket. Straightening her shoulders, she put one foot
in front of the other and started the tiresome walk back toward Number Eleven.
She only paused once along the way to pick up a scrap of paper that had blown
from the trash bin. She planned to start a new story today. Just as soon as the
silver was all put away.
~
Author
Bio: Kathy Nickerson describes herself as a writer, speaker, and eternal
optimist. (Because she knows how The Book ends.) She writes from northeast
Missouri where she lives, loves, and works with her husband of nearly forty
years. Her short stories and articles have appeared in several magazines, and
her novel Thirty Days to Glory will
be released from Cross River Media this year. (www.CrossRiverMedia.com)
You
can follow Kathy’s blog or sign up for her newsletter on Faith, Family,
Friends, and Fun
at
www.kathynick.com .
On "Speak UP!" with Scott McCausey of ChristianDevotions.com: Tuesday, March 28th at 6:00 p.m. Eastern time/5:00 p.m. Central time, Linnette R Mullin - author of life-changing romance and the award-winning novel "Finding Beth," will be interviewed on blog-talk radio! God is doing some amazing things in our resident author's life, so tune in for the interview tonight. 
