To Fill a Jar With Water (eBook)

Juliette Rose Kerr (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2024 | 1. Auflage
282 Seiten
Bookbaby (Verlag)
979-8-3509-2484-8 (ISBN)

Infos

It's more than flowers that bloom when Daniel meets Rose at Bailey's Nursery. Both drawn to each other, they form a tender bond just days after meeting. Dealt all the wrong cards in life, they've both coped with painful losses. Daniel tries to make amends following an O.U.I., while Rose and her sister Carrie are in survival mode following the abrupt departure of their mother from their lives. Attempting to bloom where they're planted, each one travels a rugged path toward healing and wholeness.

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In the quiet seaside town of Plymouth, MA, brothers Will and Daniel and sisters Carrie and Rose have all endured troubled childhoods. They've practically raised themselves, thanks to parents who have exited their lives in one way or another. Left to fend for themselves, they've managed to scrape by and start again. Yet coping with the losses has come at a cost: Will and Daniel struggle with alcohol and their splintered relationship, Carrie narrowly maintains a grip on her addiction, and Rose is drowning under the ruthless weight of exhaustion and loneliness. Rose's world is further upended when she discovers that Carrie, the person she knows best, is pregnant with Will's child - a man whose anger toward women is palpable. But Rose's life soon changes course when she meets Daniel. Drawn to each other and longing for a sense of kinship that's always escaped them, they form a tender bond just days after meeting. But as their relationship starts to deepen, they're swept up in a vicious squall that will change their lives forever.

Textauszug

Rose

June 24, 2015

Rose had read somewhere that loneliness hurt more than a broken arm. There wasn’t a cast or a pill or surgery that could heal it. Although she’d never thought about it before, she knew what they said was true. And even though there was a cure, everyone walked around like there was no medicine for it. Loneliness felt like the gargantuan shadow of a giant, stalking her, enveloping her—making all the colors around her gray. It swallowed colors whole. And even though they weren’t too far beyond her reach, she never seemed to catch up with them.

“Ro-Rosie,” Dottie called to her from down the aisle. “I’m gonna need you to restock all the feminine products in aisle nine. After you’re through there, be a dear and gather all the electric scooters in the parking lot. Drive them back where they belong.”

Dottie was Rose’s uber-efficient manager at the big-box store where she’d worked for the past two years.

“And when you’re done with the scooters, stop by the employee lounge, pretty please with sugar on top?” Dottie winked and swished back to the stockroom.

Rose caught a glimpse of the back of her t-shirt through her undone apron. It read, “Little Miss Sassy Pants.” She smiled.

Dottie had such a carefree way of dressing, but Rose knew it wasn’t something she could ever get away with wearing. She didn’t have Dottie’s natural confidence. Hesitant to put herself out there, Rose often rinsed and repeated the same outfit—a white shirt, a pair of faded, hand-me-down 501s, and a pink zip-up hoodie when the weather got colder.

Today was Rose’s seventeenth birthday and she’d already caught wind of the little party Dottie whipped up for her in the break room. She’d organized the “shin dig,” as Dottie liked to call it, with some of the girls who worked at the jewelry counter. They’d spilled the beans in the parking lot this morning walking into work.

If this birthday was anything like the last, Dottie would have baked a special cake for her decorated with little pink flowers on top of chocolate frosting. Rose also had a small obsession with Schweppes Ginger Ale. She knew that would be there too. Ginger ale always reminded her of her grandmother who used to give her a glass when she visited after church each Sunday. She would open a can of brown bread and pour baked beans on top, then serve her a glass of Schweppes over crushed ice. They’d sit around her small kitchen table, just the two of them, say grace and talk about the morning’s Sunday school lesson.

Rose appreciated Dottie’s thoughtfulness and how she made sure to jot down every employee’s mentioned preferences in her pocket-sized, polka-dot notebook she kept in her immaculate store apron— the one she washed and ironed weekly. It made Rose feel seen, heard —noticed—like she didn’t have to beg for the attention. Dottie’s small gestures were always able to create some distance between her and the giant, if only for a moment.

“You never know when it may come in handy someday,” Dottie liked to say, patting the cover and placing it with particular importance in her pocket for safe keeping.

Rarely left unattended, Rose spied it in the break room the other day. She turned the pages perusing the dainty notebook. Under her name it read, “Rose = bookworm, church bells, snowmen, and walking.” Rose wasn’t sure if walking was really a favorite thing of hers or something she did more out of necessity, but for the most part, Dottie was a keen observer of people’s interests. Tempted to pencil in additional information like her favorite band or her favorite order at Mamma Mia’s, Rose decided against it and placed the notebook at the bottom of Dottie’s locker out of the way of other prying eyes.

The parking lot was virtually empty this afternoon. Rose felt the hot asphalt through the soles of her white sneakers. At what temperature did rubber melt? It was brutal weather for a fair-complexioned girl with ginger hair. Last week her freckled shoulders fried under similar conditions, and now her red-peeling skin rubbed against her ivory tank top. The tips of her shoulders, especially the small bone that protruded on either side, would again be bright red by the time she was through gathering them all up. Why hadn’t she worn any sunscreen like Carrie had told her to?

Strolling through the parking lot, keeping an eye out for scooters, Rose liked to keep a low profile. Naturally reserved, although most people didn’t think of her that way, she avoided eye contact with customers. Riding the scooters back to the parking bay always made her feel a little awkward.

Come to think of it, she did a lot of jobs at the store that made her feel uncomfortable. She was self-conscious when she restocked the feminine products, pregnancy tests, and adult diapers. She cringed when she had to clean out the sanitary napkin bins beside the women’s toilets. Just thinking about all the times she did awkward jobs at the store made her cheeks flush, although in this heat you’d never notice.

Why wasn’t she assigned any of the normal jobs at work? She’d do anything to clean the dressing rooms or collect the empty cardboard boxes by the registers. She’d be happy to oversee cleaning up the break room or wiping down smudged fingerprints from the front windows. But she knew daydreaming about the nicer jobs at work was useless. Rose knew Dottie trusted her. She counted on her to get the job done, even the embarrassing ones, without complaint or push back. Responsible, reliable, steady—Rose did what she was asked to do. She liked being helpful.

Just as she spotted the first scooter, she heard a scream come from the gardening center near the corner of the lot. People were gathering around a spot on the ground. Worried there’d been an accident or a child hurt, she sprinted toward the commotion. Breathing heavily, she saw a dark figure from the corner of her eye.

“Ma’am, I didn’t see him. I’m sorry,” he said. “One minute I was backing up, and the next minute I felt something underneath my back tire. I had no idea.”

Dressed from head to toe in pitch black, except for a tooth of white in his collar, the sun, high in the sky, fiercely beat down on him. Rose worried the priest might pass out from heatstroke or shock. He was an older man, and small beads of sweat formed on his brow and upper lip. Pulling out a dingy handkerchief from his back pocket, he wiped his forehead.

As he leaned over to inspect the injured dog, Rose thought he was most likely pleading with the dog to get back up. He made a half-hearted attempt to wake it by rubbing its side and nudging its shoulder. Small drops of sweat from his brow fell on the dog, but not even this baptism could help the poor fellow now. A few women in the crowd began to fan themselves with their grocery circulars and glanced uncomfortably at each other.

“Does anyone have a blanket in their car?” Rose asked as she approached the group, snapping them out of their collective helplessness.

She identified the owner because she was the only one who was wiping tears and snot onto her shirtsleeve. Patting the poor dog’s back, she kept stroking its face. She called him Patches. Rose assumed the dog must’ve jumped out of her open window as she backed out of the parking space. He was so quiet, lying on the hot pavement; but Rose was relieved when she saw he was still breathing and opened his eyes.

A few people in the crowd put their hands on her shoulders offering their support. Rose noticed no one touched the priest or made a similar gesture. He stood like an island. A gentleman in a seersucker jacket brought a blue wool blanket from his car.

“Let’s get Patches onto the blanket and lift him into the car,” Rose directed. “You, sir.” She pointed to a man in the front of the crowd. “Can you lift his front legs and can you get his back?” She gestured to another man standing at the back who looked strong enough to carry some weight.

The owner stood doubled over, tipping forward from the weight of her tears and would not let her precious animal go.

“Can someone drive her to the vet?”

The priest held his hand up halfway in the air and the crowd gradually dispersed as the dog was lifted into the car.

Gently lowering the gate of the SUV, Rose locked it into place and tapped the back of the car twice. The priest opened the passenger’s side door for the owner and walked around the back of the car to the driver’s side. For a moment, they caught each other’s eyes and Rose’s heart ached for him. She saw his hand slightly shake on the door handle before he opened it.

As the car exited the parking lot, Rose waved goodbye, although she knew they couldn’t see her. The thought of something being hurt on her birthday gave her an uneasy feeling in the pit of her stomach.

Woozy from the heat, Rose abandoned her task of finding the scooters and headed back inside. A cold blast of air froze the sweat to her body when she re-entered the store. Her skin was sticky and clammy. She shivered.

With five minutes left until the end of her shift, she remembered the party in the break room and headed in that direction. As she walked down the aisle toward the back of the store, she heard a few distant “happy birthdays” from co-workers who were restocking the shelves or milling about. The sides of her mouth curled up into a smile...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 7.3.2024
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Literatur ► Romane / Erzählungen
• ISBN-13: 979-8-3509-2484-8 / 9798350924848