Chapter Seven...

The week with her mother and sister was full of caffeine, front row performances from the window across the street, and charity feeding marathons with the unemployed British man next door. Anna realized instantly that Marcus was extremely hung over the first time her mother met the man, but she was snowed bye the charm (not to mention the accent). He was very easily the newest member of the family and adapted to the women with ease, showing no dastardly signs of having designs on Lucy or Marian. Anna was half relieved for her mother and sister, but curious what her father’s reaction would be when he arrived.

Anna, Lucy, Marcus, and Marian sat on the front stoop waiting for Lloyd’s cab to arrive. Anna sat quiet with her elbows resting on her knees while the other three were lost in a conversation on how best to “woo” a woman, and Marcus was losing with a very large smile on his face. She fiddled with the rickrack lining the bottom of her corduroy skirt, toes curled in her flip flops, and her eyes wouldn’t look away from the street. When the cab turned the corner, she was the first on her feet. Without hesitation, Anna walked to the street and waited for the cabbie to pop the trunk. She grabbed the bag and stuck it in the front door and went back to pay for the trip. Marcus, her mother, and sister were off before the cab had peeled down the street. Anna looked over to her dad and time stopped for a moment so she could stop herself from doing anything but sighing. He walked over to her and hugged her and they clung in silence for a few beats.

“Hey baby girl.”

“Hi daddy.”

“Who’s that strange man walking with your mom and sister?” He let go and took Anna’s hand.

“That’s Marcus.”

“The one Lucy squeals to her friends about?”

“No, that’s Travis. Marcus lives in the flat next to mine.”

“Flat?”

“He’s English…think of it as transference.”

“You’re not dating him, are you?”

Anna gave her dad’s hand a squeeze and led him down the street, following the three amigos. “No, but at this rate, you may lose either ma or Luce at any turn of phrase. Either way he’s the son you never knew about.” She bit her bottom lip and turned to hug her father’s arm. “He’s good to have around. He knew Uncle Tom, and thus he takes care of me…although I’m thinking about getting jealous with mom and Lucy around. You’re here now though. I’ll be fine as long as you’re around, daddy.”

Anna and her father walked on in silence for three blocks, hand in hand. Halfway down the fourth block, in the distance, Anna and her father could hear salsa music. Anna’s father turned his head, “Now, what is this again?”

“Well,” Anna explained, “Once a year, the Art Center hosts a block party—which is actually four blocks—to raise arts appreciation and raise money to keep the Art Center open.”

“And what does this block party consist of?”

“Well, from what I hear, it starts at 7 a.m. and ends at midnight. During the day, it’s pretty typical family stuff: face painting, craft vendors, funnel cakes, with different musicians around every corner. There’ll also be art exhibits, concerts, and dancing exhibitions—even a local writers’ book cart. It’s artsy this’n’that everywhere. I wouldn’t be surprised if we see a mime or puppet show or some Shakespeare.”

“During the day…”

“From 7 p.m. on, it’s all ritzy. That’s why I told you to bring your tux.” Anna’s father looked a little hard-pressed to understand his daughter’s excitement. Anna smiled with her whole body.

“As long as I can keep my face painting on.”

She looked at the ornery grin on her father’s face and brought his hand to her mouth and went to gnaw on his knuckles, but he managed to pull his hand away before she got her fangs out.

“That’s just what you get, dad.”

“Anna Banana, I’ve missed you.”

“I missed me, too, daddy.”

The two turned left and could see the salsa band playing at the other end of the street. Maurice was already in the middle of everything, dancing horrendously with Lucy and Anna’s mother. Anna caught his glance and let loose with a belly laugh. Her father dropped her hand.

“I think I need to go and save that poor man from your mother.”

“I’m sure you do.”

She was convinced either she or Lucy had been secretly betrothed to her neighbor by her mother. Anna wandered on ahead of her crowd of four, making her way through the first block, only stopping to purchase a book of collected short stories. The second block, she watched, with awe, as one of the art students water colored a little girl playing with a bubble machine, and watched the little girl and her brother jumping to catch them. Upon the art student’s finish, Anna introduced herself and got the woman’s number after inquiring about her other works. Moving on, Anna found herself under a tent full of the school’s prints and a few originals. She caught herself drooling and walked over to a wire postcard rack. Fishing through them, she spotted an odd card out, alone behind a more provocative ‘painting’ of a woman lying, naked, on a large tree branch. This postcard was a ‘painting’ of the streetlight right out of her bedroom window. Her brownstone was shadowed out, and the streetlight shown on her cherry tree—albeit a very young cherry tree.

Purchasing it, the vendor stated, “I imagine I’ll have to get one of those for myself.” Stopping at home, she put it on her nightstand before primping.

Chapter Six...

The sun stood inexplicably proud, boasting a beautiful sunrise, and equally beguiling day. The brick brownstone looked up and welcomed her friend. They had a lovely discussion regarding the flammability of pigeons. The curious cherry tree giggled and stretched, reached and stretched. Anna opened the door and leaned over to grab the newspaper on her stoop. Her long, brown, bed head hair fell loosely in her face. The sun caught in it and sighed. Anna stood back in the doorway and looked across the silent sidewalk. It was late enough in the morning that all the commuters were gone, and all the in-town workers were just waking up.

Anna closed the door and went to the stairwell. She grabbed the two journals on the third step into her arms and sat in their place. She leaned her uncle’s journal against her bare hip and left her journal in her lap. A groggy, half-awake yawn escaped her mouth in a morning cloud. Putting the Daily News between the next step up and the small of her back, she leaned back and felt a shaft of daybreak peek in from the stained-glass front door on her cheek. She fished the collar of her father’s old work shirt out with her pen. It was typically her ritual to sit at her breakfast table not tugging at her knee-high socks, but she was too hot to sit with the sunlight pouring in from the living room window.

Reaching over tow pull up one of her knee socks, her finger discovered a small hole in the weaving, “Aw.” Anna sat back up and leafed through the pages she had already filled. She took meticulous care to see that the entries were always-at the very least-legible, if not somewhat insightful. At times she scolded herself for being fake with her entries—as she didn’t really consider herself to be even slightly insightful. Other times she wrote, keeping the focus completely away from her. Uncle Tom’s entries were, on occasion, completely indecipherable, but always involving. He was the heart of the world, people passed through and he would fill them with life and pass them on to fulfill their destinies. Anna picked up her uncle’s journal and opened it towards the back to the same date: August 23rd, only the year was 1999. She had only been in high school. He’d written:

“You know what’s so amazing about the hand of providence? The hand of providence allows room for only one rule. THERE ARE NO RULES!!! Rules are for those wanting to play life, not for those wanting to live it. I want to live. I want to truly live. I want to live! I want to live! I want to live…”

He’d filled the rest of that page with the phrase, “I want to live!” Anna panged. She placed her uncle’s journal back on the step and opened her own. Coming to a fresh page, Anna noticed a fallen strand of hair, she picked it up. Seeing it was her own, she lifted the page and placed the hair behind it to save her place, and set to writing.

“Days like this make me miss dad, miss being little…when I knew I had it all together. Autumn is just beginning. The sun is everywhere and everything is softening with age. On mornings like this, dad would wake me up early to watch the sun rise and see how much the trees had changed color. It was the only ‘romantic’ side to being the daughter of a botanist. I never was a fan of the Latin.

“It’s funny to miss dad. It’s been three months now? Our conversations have found themselves limited to if I’m okay, how’s work, how’s money, how’s the car… There’s a wall there. Ever since Uncle Tom’s lawyer sat us down, dad hasn’t fought me on a thing. He doesn’t laugh at my jokes and passes me over to mom or Luce at any awkward pause in the conversation, he never gives me advice anymore. It’s like I get more parenting from Uncle Tom’s journals than from my own father anymore. It hurts.”

Anna threw the pen out of her hand and closed the book in her lap. Her breathing was shaky and her cheeks were burning. Taking the journals, she walked to the kitchen and shoved the journals back onto the windowsill. The phone rang and momentarily distracted her.

“Anna honey?”

“Oh, hey mom.”

“Just wanted to let you know they just made the first call for our flight. We should be there in about two and a half-three hours.”

“Okay, well, I’ll meet you at the luggage turny thing?”

“Anna? Are you okay sweetie?”

“Mom, I’ll see you in a little bit. Go get on the plane.”

“Love you.”

“Love you, too.”

Anna put the cell phone back in its charger and ran up to her bedroom. She made her bed and grabbed something to change into. On her way to the bathroom, she stopped and turned her radio on, full volume. Otis Redding was lamenting a love he never really loved and never really loved him back. She hung her clothes on the towel rack and reached a blind arm into the shower curtain, turning on the hot water. Anna hadn’t realized she’d been crying until she caught a glimpse of her reflection in the mirror above the sink, at which point, she drowned.

Chapter Five...

The concrete shown white under Anna’s feet, in spite of a cool summer breeze. Autumn was soon coming, and felt even closer than the calendar state it was. She carried Marcus’s arm in her own as they walked in an unfamiliar neighborhood. Her other hand was shoved in her jacket pocket, holding the business card. Marcus proved to be an honorable friend, walking her to and from her first piano lesson. Anna had called the number on the card the morning after reading an entry her uncle made regarding writing his first song. She felt a pang of jealousy and itched all night waiting to be able to make the call. Talking to the receptionist, right away she recognized her teacher, Daniel Bledsoe, to be the same piano teacher from her uncle’s journal. When he came to the phone, her stomach leapt. He talked like he was lying half-awake on the floor.

“Anna, love?”

“Yes Marcus?”

“Does this mean I’m going to need to buy earplugs?” Marcus lit up with a grin and shook with laughter. Anna looked aghast and elbowed him in the ribs, “Oh, you rot! That hurt!”

“If you didn’t feel the need to be cheeky, I suppose my elbow wouldn’t feel the need to be so close to your ribs. Besides, you never know. I could have a real knack for this.” They stopped in front of a five-story building. On it read a sign: Bledsoe’s Center Of The Arts. Walking up the stairs, she read the list on the door. The building was home to lessons in writing, dance, photography, acting, music, and crafting. Inside, the receptionist pointed her to the forth floor, room 401. Marcus left her at the receptionist’s desk, leaning over the mousy, unsuspecting receptionist.

On her way to the elevator, she passed a room of young children in a ballet lesson. She could hear a small jazz band playing down the hall. Original art, tiny cards under them stating their artist, title, and price lined the walls. The floor was gray marble tile, and waxed to such a high gloss Anna was pleased she wasn’t wearing a skirt. She watched every step she took in the reflection of the tile. The elevator was small but grand, covered in a tile mosaic. At the fourth floor, a thirteen year old girl holding a bass, about a foot taller than her peeked out from behind it. Anna jumped out of the girl’s way and tiptoed down to the correct room.

Stepping in 401, she wondered if she was entering the right room. Closing the door behind her, five teenagers looked up from behind their easels with curious half-glances then promptly went back to work. A man stepped in the room from a door on the opposite side of the classroom, he motioned for Anna to follow him. Once through the door, she got a better look at him. Daniel Bledsoe had salt and pepper dreadlocks pulled into a ponytail on the top of his head. Against the milky white skin, his facial hair almost looked fake, but from the five o’clock shadow, she could tell it wasn’t. He wore two tee shirts, a maroon short sleeved shirt that said “PIRATES” over a plain yellow long sleeved tee shirt. His jeans were faded, but fit, and his feet were bare. She gawked at the hippie.

They had entered a hallway with four or five windowed doors. Mr. Bledsoe entered the last door and Anna followed him inside. The room was foam padded and soundproof except for the windowed door. There was barely room for the two of them and the piano in there. As he sat on the bench, she remembered her uncle’s sketch. “So you’re the piano man.”

He gave her a half smile and reached out his hand, “Daniel Bledsoe. You’re Anna?”

“Yes.”

“Your uncle used to talk about you all the time.”

“He did?”

“Have you ever had a piano lesson before?”

Anna shook his hand, placed her bag on the floor, and took a seat beside him on the bench. For an hour they began with the basics—finger placement, scales, and beginning theory. He handed her a binder full of the information the would be going over. Daniel’s charm and laid-back style won Anna over instantly. He was an easy-going, able teacher. She was clumsy at first, but the more comfortable she felt with him, the smoother she was. They made no more talk about her uncle, but Anna knew that’s not what she was there for.

At the end of the lesson, she was easily reassured that she would prove to be a capable student.

“Do you still have the grand piano in the guestroom?”

“Yeah, just like uncle Tom left it.”

“He loved that piano.”

“Yeah, he wrote about it all the time. He also wrote you were a bigger fan of the baby grand. Did you end up with it?”

Daniel shifted positions in the elevator, “Sort of. He donated it to the Art Center. It’s in the ballet practice room.”

Upon seeing Marcus waiting in front of the elevator, Anna shirked. He walked straight for her with his arms outstretched. She though he might have been drinking again when he turned and gave Mr. Bledsoe the embrace of his life. “Danny! Mate, long time, no see!”

The two of them reminisced like two old biddies. Although stumped, Anna didn’t ask Marcus a thing about it on the way back home.

Chapter Four...

Anna turned over in her bed to discover a puddle of melted ice. It took her a moment to get over how annoyed she was, for her to get out of bed. The moonlight folded through the sheers and cast a silver glow over the room. Anna touched her comforter to see if it was wet as well, she was able to salvage it and her pillows. She took the sheets off the bed, took them to the laundry room, and stuffed them in the dryer. Going to the bathroom, she grabbed a towel from under the sink. She laid the towel on the bed to soak up the puddle and went downstairs. The silver glow seemed to follow her from room to room. The kitchen was no different.

The clock on the microwave blinked three forty-two to Anna’s astonishment. She reached in the cabinet over it for a glass. Turning the tap on, she caught the box on the kitchen table out of the corner of her eye. Anna had made a few brief entries of her own, but had yet to read any of her uncle’s. There were twenty-five journals—one for every year of her life, and one for each of the four years prior. She had managed to categorize them chronologically one afternoon while baking cookies for all of her neighbors. It had taken her four hours between mixing, dropping, baking, cooling, packaging, and cleaning. She arranged them on the windowsill behind the table and had used the box to carry all the cookies.

Hearing the buzz of the dryer, she sat at the table and grabbed one of the journals. She reached over behind the spice rack and turned the overhead light on. The journal was a black, leather bound, hardback book. Inside, it was lineless white paper with gold leaf edging. On the first page was the date, January 1st, 1983, there was no written entry only a sketch of a young man sitting at the piano up in the guest room, the man was probably her age when it was drawn. Her uncle didn’t draw with a strong line, but with what Anna imagined was a sketch artist’s loose hand.

Impressed by how natural the pose looked, she could almost see his fingers moving across the keys. Flipping the page, the journal entry was upside down. She shifted the book and read.

“January 2nd, 1983

“Daniel tells me I am improving and progressing naturally—that by the end of the month I may be able to tackle something of substance. I’m tired of childish rhyming songs and cheap hymns. I want to play something deeper than ‘Chopsticks.’

“I find myself hiding in the song room more often these days, pretending no one can hear my uneven and stuttered playing. I’ve been avoiding Baby like the plague…she’s too close to the window, and I can hear Daniel playing her if I stop for a smoke on the stoop.

“I’m impatient, I know.”

Anna smiled at her uncle’s irrational sense of fear. It was something she recognized as having herself. It was the only thing keeping her from calling up the man her uncle knew, to start lessons. Anna closed the journal and passed the microwave clock. It still blinked three forty-two. Confused, she pressed the “STOP” button and the clock blinked to one fifty-three. She rolled her eyes and walked up to the third floor.

The brownstone was quiet except for the buzz of the dryer. When the stairs creaked, she jumped, but knew no one was in the house. Anna stepped over to the guest room and stopped at the door. She imagined her uncle standing in the same spot with the journal in his hands, sketching away. It was a plain, white room with one large window overlooking the neighborhood. She felt like she was standing above all their heads, as only Marcus’s brownstone had a third floor as well. Walking to the window, she could see across the street into the Nurse’s kitchen. The cat was sleeping in the window, undisturbed.

Anna turned around and paused to gather her wits about the monster in front of her. She knew, ultimately, that it was capable of being gentle, but she stood intimidated still. She reached out her hand to touch it when the dryer’s buzzer went off and scared the snot out of her. Breathing a sigh of relief, she leapt down the stairs and pulled the warm sheets out of the dryer. The towel had soaked up the puddle, but the mattress was still damp. She dressed the bed and tossed the wet towel in her hamper.

Lying down was easy enough until she rolled over her arm. With a start, Anna jumped out of her bed and ran down to the kitchen to re-ice. Sedate and iced, Anna closed her eyes and tried to settle in. First, her boxers shifted funny, so she had to shift around to get them back in place. Then, she realized her toes were cold, so she got up to put on a pair of socks. Next, the streetlight in front of her room started fluttering, so she turned over, and as soon as she found herself in the best sleeping position of her life, the ice got to her. It got to her so much she had to get up and shuffle all the way to the bathroom.

Chapter Three...

Anna stepped out of the coffee house with an ice filled towel plastered to the inside of her forearm. Her boss, Frankie, had warned her of steam burns being frequent in the beginning, but she was completely unprepared for the continual sting. She still wore her work apron, and had a pen holding the majority of her hair up. She felt the rain first on the neck, then on her hand. Looking up, she shook her head in disbelief. Hearing a noise from the brownstone across from the coffee house, she stopped to look.

The brownstone had large, butter colored stones and a plush, green lawn. It was a corner building with plenty of room for a large family. Christmas lights drenched the building with odd September whimsy. The front door flung open and five young men bounced out of the house. Two of them ran off and jogged down the street. Two others made their way to the tether ball setup in the front yard and began playing the game with their feet. Anna gawked. The fifth young man walked to the mailbox and Anna ran across the street to catch him.

“Excuse me?”

The boy turned around and she slowed her pace. He was closing the mailbox when she realized she had lost her footing. Trying to stop herself with her bad arm, she yelped. When he caught her at the burn, she cursed aloud.

“Are you okay?”

“I’m so sorry, that wasn’t meant for you. I started at the coffee shop today and burnt myself on the steamer. I’ve got it iced,” she held up her arm as if to try to convince the young man her hurt was genuine, “but it still hurts like the dickens. I’m sorry.”

The young man had a black eye and awful fried blond hair that stuck straight out of his head. “S’alright. Say, you aren’t?”

“Tom’s niece? Yes, and you?”

“Will. The guys tethering are David and Jason. Don’t mind their feet in the air, it’s good practice.”

Anna smiled sheepishly and laughed aloud, “Marcus told me you all were football players—it didn’t strike me at the moment that he meant soccer.”

“Yeah, we get that a lot. We have half the town convinced that Dave there is the quarterback. No one has yet to question our ability to sack a refrigerator. I find it gets me a few more numbers at the end of the night, so I let’em all think it.”

“I can understand that.”

The raindrops became a sprinkle as Will hovered over the mail in his hands. They gestured their “so longs” and Will turned around to bellow, “Mail call!” The doors flung open and three more young men appeared in the doorway. She blushed as she could hear them mention “the skirt.” Anna turned toward her house and began walking.

Giving pause and looking up to see if the plumber was in, she could hear someone speak behind her, “I really haven’t the slightest idea what to say…just wanted you to know I’m here before I scare you off.” It was a shocking statement. Anna turned, Marcus sat on his stoop next to a bottle of something she was positive had him sauced. She leaned over and gave him a good look in the eyes.

“Hello to you, too. Lousy day, Marcus?”

“Indeed. Boss scrapped my raise and proceeded to try and bed me down on her desk. I had to give notice…” He sniffled, “She got all…huffy…and told me some day I’d get mine. Little did she know she was it. You?”

Anna sat down next to the broken, saucer-eyed man and moved the bottle away from him. She could smell the alcohol all over him. She put one hand on his back and showed him the towel, “Ah, just a little burn. Nothing a trip to my freezer couldn’t take care of.” The two sat in the silence of the rain without words. Anna rubbed Marcus’s back until her hand went numb. He sneezed.

“You should go inside. You’ll catch cold if you stay out here.”

“Your uncle was a brilliant man. You look like him. Prettier.”

“Yeah?”

“Yes, prettier.”

Anna smiled and reached up to pet the man’s schoolboy hair. She placed her hand on his shoulder and stood up, “Really, you should go inside.”

He pushed himself off the step and turned into his doorway, “Night.”

Anna jumped down off the stoop and stepped over to her own. She grabbed the railing and leaned back into the rain. The pen fell out of her hair and she jerked back up. Bending over to grab the pen, she saw a reflection in the street. As she stood up, the streetlights lit the rain. It wasn’t dark yet, but she was glad they were on. Anna could hear the cello under the rain hitting the ground. Looking up in to Travis’s living room, he nodded a hello to her. She waved back with the pen in her hand and made her way inside.

Grabbing her mail off the floor, she flipped through it and separated the bills out, dropped them off to the first floor office for the morning and trashed the junk mail. She dropped the left over letter from her best friend, catalogue, and magazine on her couch in the living room, took off her shoes, unwrapped her apron, and walked to the freezer.

Chapter Two...

The shrieking on the other end of the phone was that of her sister’s. “He literally said that to you? Anna, I don’t know about all this…your first, um, meeting in the neighborhood is with a middle-aged, womanizing, British man? Are you sure the accent’s real?”

Anna cradled the receiver between her cheek and shoulder. She sat in the corner of the large window seat in the living room. It was nearing dusk, and out of the end of the window, she could see the coffee house lights flicker to life. The curtains were easy to sink into, and she found herself leaning back to do so. A young cherry tree began to sway easy with the wind, Anna pushed open the window and felt a sheet of cool air rush in over her. Taking a deep breath, she pulled up the curtain from the floor and wrapped it around her legs. The sun was setting quite fast.

“I suppose it could be, only time will tell for sure. I mean, he has no chance with me, I’m too young for him. And get this, the reason he told me ‘what’ he is, is because he respected Uncle Tom that much.”

“He knew uncle Tom?”

“Well, according to Marcus, our uncle was the axis this neighborhood turned on.” Anna recalled the weeks worth of friendly stoop conversation. Marcus was, so far, a man of his word. The last three nights alone, she’d seen four different women enter and leave his flat—all of them in their mid-twenties to early thirties.

“Really?”

“Really…Oh no!”

“What?”

“Lucy! Do you remember that web cam program I set up on your computer, so you could accept feed from my web cam?” Anna leapt to her feet and ran to her desk.

“Barely, why?”

Without explaining herself, she gave her sister a quick tutorial on how to get the program up and running, all the while setting up her own. When she could see herself on her monitor, she set the web cam on the windowsill and turned all her lights off.

“Anna, what’s this all about? What am I looking at...oh!”

Anna’s breath caught as she saw the living room window across from hers blink with light. “He’s the plumber I was telling you about.”

“Man, that’s an amazing piece of technology you have there. I can see him perfectly. Wait.”

“What?”

“Anna, is this legal?”

She giggled at her sister’s sudden worry, “Probably a total invasion of privacy, but it’s not like you’re going to see him naked.”

“Damnation Anna! You tease.”

“Damnation Lucy? Is that even a word?” Anna’s smile stretched from ear to ear, but she stifled her laughter as a figure came into the window. He was Anna’s age, possibly a year older or younger. His skin palled in the harsh room light. The hair on his head curled tightly in a black halo around his head. His face was at seven o’clock, but angelic in spite. As he walked closer to his window, Anna sunk deeper into her curtains. The plumber pushed open his own window, leaning out a moment before turning into another room.

“Anna! Keep up! I can’t see him.”

“Lucy, calm down, I can’t get the web cam to move so you can see inside his kitchen, the cord’s not long enough.”

“Well, at least tell me what you see!”

She described to Lucy as she watched him put a pot of water on the stove, and grab a box from his cupboard. “Ah, but Lucy, that isn’t the best part. He’s started.”

“Well, shut up then!”

Anna took the receiver from her ear and placed it pointing toward the sound of his voice. The plumber had started singing as soon as he turned the burner on. She saw him mess with an egg timer and then move back to his living room. He pulled a stool in front of the window, and then his bow and cello. She pulled the phone to her ear, “Lucy, can you hear him?”

“My lord, Anna, put the phone back so I can!” Anna smiled into the receiver and set it down on the windowsill. He was singing in probably Italian or Spanish, Anna wasn’t sure, but she sat with her knees tucked to her chest. The sun set with a sigh, and everything turned purple. It was a dream, this place.

He played for a good ten minutes and got up to finish making his dinner. Anna picked up the phone, “Lucy, did I hit the nail on the head, or what?” The other end of the phone was silent. She looked at the screen of her cell phone and saw that the connection had been lost. At first she thought to call, but knew her sister would be livid, so she put the web cam away and turned off her computer. She went to the corner lamp and turned it on. Feeling a hunger pang of her own, she stopped by her freezer and grabbed a pint of cherry nut ice cream, opened her fridge and grabbed the chocolate syrup, and nabbed a spoon from the wire drying rack.

Upon reentering her living room, she noticed he had stopped singing. Anna looked to the window seat and saw him watching her from his stool. He was eating something directly from his pot. Placing the syrup bottle on the windowsill, she hitched up her jeans and sat down to join him.

“Name’s Travis,” he called over to her.

“Anna.”

Chapter One...

Anna inherited a tiny brownstone from an uncle she met once when she was three. His passing went nearly unnoticed by the family and they mourned just as well. The black sheep of the family, no one was particularly close to him, though in his bequeathing, he attached this sentiment towards Anna: “In an hour’s visit, she had me wrapped smart around her little finger. I was enraptured by such a tiny, little girl, and so impressed by her abandon. I knew that only such a ham would truly appreciate a gift of this magnitude.” His sentiment did not go void.

On her first tour of the neighborhood, Anna’s heart nearly fell from her chest onto the front stoop, a big, red mess. The brownstone’s thick, brick face smiled warmly down on the girl as the fire hydrant held her knees from buckling. She felt her pulse quicken as her uncle’s lawyer placed one hand on the doorknob and the key in the lock. The building shook out a waking yawn and invited the two strangers in. The outside planter boxes were full of flourishing foliage, and the rooms inside were modernly furnished. They were a pair.

Anna and the lawyer ambled from room to room. Upon her heart sinking when the lawyer pointed out she would not be keeping the baby grand piano in the living room, he took her up to the third floor. He opened the door to a bare-walled room with a wall-sized window and seven-foot grand piano with bench. On the bench sat a small business card, facedown. Anna picked it up and saw writing that she guessed to be her uncle’s. It said, “Tell him you’re my niece—he owes me a favor.” Turning it over, she saw that it was a coupon for a year’s worth of free lessons.

The rest of the house was a blur until the lawyer took her into the kitchen. He stepped into the pantry, turned the pull light on, climbed the bare shelves, and passed a large box with handles down to Anna. “Those are your uncle’s personal journals. He wishes you to keep them private from his family and wishes you to add on with your own journal entries. There should be four or five extra blank journals in there to assist you in fulfilling this.”

“Is me keeping this place dependent on me journaling?”

“No, but it is his wish. And besides, I find transitions are always a little easier to make when you have somewhere to vent.”

With that, the lawyer handed Anna the keys and they stepped out of the house. The lawyer wished her luck and let her know the movers would be by mid-week to gather the remainder of the will’s uncollected things for delivery. He folded himself into his car and drove down the street, turning left at the stop sign. She thought for a moment she might follow his example, until she turned to face the brownstone again. It took her twenty minutes to figure out she could still move.

The sun, suspended yellow overhead, lit the noonday sky overpowering every shadow under it. Anna pulled her cotton skirt close to her legs as she sat on the third step. Surrounding her, brick, stone, and concrete—brownstones on either side of her and across the street—save for the stucco coffee house at the corner. Cars parked alongside both curbs. Anna likened the neighborhood to an uncertain type of suburbia. She hadn’t a clue about her safety, how young or old her neighbors were, or quite what she was doing with the set of keys in her hand.

“You okay?”

Anna nearly jumped from her skin. “Oh, yes.” She wiped the tears forming behind her eyes when they happened upon the Englishman leaning over his railing to see if she was well. “I’m sorry, I don’t usually blubber in public.”

“Ah, good then. You Tom’s child?”

Anna smoothed her skirt and turned her knees toward the stranger, “No, his niece.”

“Ah, pity. Always thought Tom would make a great dad…” The man paused for a moment. Anna flinched as a look of shock took over his features, “I’m sorry, I’m forgetting all manners. My name is Marcus. I live here.”

She purred inside as he spoke. She reached under her own railing and shook his hand. “I’m Anna. Glad to know I’m not the only one who’s not from around here.”

“Why however could you tell?” Marcus’s face was overwhelmed with a white smile. He was in his early forties, clean cut with dark schoolboy hair. His accent whispered in Anna’s ear like a seaside breeze.

“Wild guess, that’s all.” Anna stood up to meet his gaze. He was tall, but she taller only by a few inches. “Say, my uncle’s lawyer was able to tell me everything about this place, but wasn’t able to tell me a thing about my new neighbors. Is there any light you might be able to shed?”

“Well, for starters,” Marcus pointed to the brownstone in front of him, “You’re living next to a serial womanizer.”

Anna shook with laughter, “I’ll have to remember that.”