For All of Us by Jillian Rose EPUB & PDF – eBook Details Online
- Status: Available for Free Download
- Author: Jillian Rose
- Language: English
- Genre: Metaphysical Fiction
- Format: PDF / EPUB
- Size: 2 MB
- Price: Free
February 1902
I had never seen a grey sky like this one.
I had seen grey skies that hung like a blanket, smooth and heavy
and formed from misty air. I had seen crisp grey skies that spoke of the
promise of first snow, the clouds telling stories of shifting seasons. I had
seen electric grey skies, sparking and tinted with deep blue, the tiny hairs on
your arms upright and swaying to its rhythm.
And then, there is this grey.
It doesn’t hang in the air, and it doesn’t deliver electric promise. It
just moves around me, ominous and inexhaustible, permeating air and
breath and bone. Inching inward until my heart squeezes. Until my lungs
are threatened.
It’s a grey that has been stretched thin with time, but somehow, still
embodies the same density it did on that day.
I had never seen a grey sky like this one. But now, it never leaves.
The time is half past four. The in-between. A day nearly gone by,
but not quite. An evening peering from beyond the horizon. The only color
outside of the monotone is the starchy movement of my midnight blue
petticoat, brushing the cobblestone. The only sound the heels of my boots
with their clank, clank.
Clank, clank.
I’ve lived in this town for most of my life. An eighth-mile stretch of
road contains every storefront on Main Street, and I know every fissure in
every exterior wall, every octave of bell that rings over every threshold,
every smile from every store clerk and what each one holds. Because a
smile is always much more than a smile.
Mr. Hutchinson’s is the smile I am on my way to see, but how I
wish he wouldn’t offer it up. It is filled with far too many of the things we
don’t say, try to smother behind curved lip. The General Store had been
propped up on a small hill at the end of the road since as far back as I can
remember. Mr. Hutchinson has always been there. Didn’t miss a day for the
birth of his daughter. Or his son. Has not missed a day during these dark
times, and we all wonder if his superior work ethic somehow keeps him
safe. Resilient. But I think it is something more than that, somehow.
Mr. Hutchinson had always been kind to us. The ring of the bell
over his door has always been the most pleasing, with a hum to it that is
nostalgic. When it rings this time, he looks up. Smiles.
“Ms. Juliette. What a pleasant surprise.”
He places his wrinkled palms flat down on the aged wood
countertop and holds them there.
“Good to see you, Mr. Hutchinson.” I nod my head and once
inside, pull the hood of my petticoat down.
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