In Twenty Years: A Novel by Allison Winn Scotch Page A

back in Honduras. I tried to e-mail her, but she never got back to me.” She shrugs, a sad gesture.
    Lindy debates whether she should be flattered that Annie finally acknowledged her or pissed that she can’t bring herself to say her name.
    “She called me a few times,” Catherine says, like she’s just remembering. “Left me a few messages, but we were on our honeymoon . . .” She looks to Owen like maybe he can fill in the blanks. “And when we got back, I can’t . . . I can’t remember if we ever got around to talking. No. No, actually, we didn’t. That was it, the last time I spoke with her was at our wedding.” She sighs. “I mean, if something was wrong, like, if she had a will for a reason, I didn’t know.”
    “She didn’t have a will for a reason!” Colin snaps. “God. You’re acting like, she was, like suicidal! She had a huge trust, and I’m sure she was told to be responsible about it. It’s not like she was a stranger to people unexpectedly dying.”
    The other four consider Bea’s parents and nod.
    “Well, anyway. Is there something here for all of us?” Catherine looks around. They all look around. The living room is empty, other than the odd furnishings and well, them. “Why else did we come back?”
    “We came back because we got the letter,” Annie says.
    “Please.” Lindy doesn’t mean to sneer like she does when she says this.
    “Please, what?”
    “ Obviously we are here because of the letter . . . Hello!”
    “Lindy!” Catherine says. “Please don’t start already, please. Let’s put our best faces forward.”
    “This is my best face.”
    Catherine sighs, too dramatically.
    “You’re not happy with my face?”
    Catherine pinches the bridge of her nose, like Lindy is a monster headache, a giant literal pain in her brain.
    “OK, why don’t we start over?” Colin says. “Everyone is happy with everyone’s face.”
    “No, please explain what exactly you don’t like about my face,” Lindy bleats. She knows she should drop it. God, why can’t she just let it go? Stop picking this fucking scab until it’s ripe and pink and bloody?
    “Oh God,” Catherine groans.
    “Catherine.” Owen steps closer. “Not now.”
    “I’m fine,” she says, though spit flies a little from her mouth.
    “Really?” he asks.
    “Owen, please don’t start.” He sits down abruptly, dismissed, his chair squeaking, his skin flushed, his lips curled, as if he wasn’t trying to start anything before, but now very much may be considering starting something. Then, to Lindy, “Look. We’re all trying to get off on the right foot here. So let’s try that, OK?”
    “Fine.”
    “Great.”
    “Fine,” Lindy says again, not sounding fine, not feeling fine. She thrusts her hands onto her hips, calculating how quickly she can get to the airport. The first flight probably isn’t until the morning. Shit. She juts her chin. “Fine, let’s talk about it then. Why the hell are we back here?”
    “Bea asked us to,” Colin says, like this is the explanation that clarifies everything.
    “And you did always do whatever Bea wanted,” Lindy replies.
    “Lindy . . .” A long sigh from Colin.
    “We all did,” Annie interrupts. “We all tried to do what she wanted. Not just Colin.”
    “Well, she made us promise to be family, remember that?” Colin fiddles with his watch, his gaze fixed on the weathered wood floor. “So I guess we didn’t always do everything she wanted, after all.”

    The strangest thing about returning to an enclave that encapsulated your youth is that you feel like nothing should have changed. Like you still have the right to be twenty and carefree and irresponsible. Like you still are twenty and carefree and irresponsible. Lindy has ditched the suffocation of their old house, of the rest of them, sitting around saying things like “Fine,” and “Great,” when nothing is fine or great at all, and now she’s racing down the sidewalk toward Smokey