An excerpt from Time Capsule - Julianne

      Julianne Bradshaw sat in her flowered wallpaper kitchen, crying. She was covered neck to toe in a pink flannel nightgown dotted with green and yellow flowers and a pair of fuzzy pink slippers that made her feet look as if small animals had nested there. Her shoulder-length blonde hair was twisted and tangled and hung around her head like an angry mop. Crumpled white tissues lay all around her on the countertop and on the floor.

      The room smelled of burnt toast and strong coffee that had sat too long in the pot. Julianne smelled of yesterday’s lavender shampoo and today’s morning breath, and her face cream blended with stale tears, making her look much older than she really was. Julianne had been blessed with a beautiful face and body. She was tall and trim with classic features and high cheekbones, but no one who saw her this morning would say she was pretty.

      Her old boss would say she looked “rode hard and put away wet.”

      She sat on a high bar stool painted black with a wheat-colored wicker seat, leaning on her elbows on the black Formica table where she took all of her meals alone. Both hands were wrapped around a large white coffee mug with a radio station’s call letters printed on one side and the slogan, “Rock ’Til You Drop” on the other. The coffee inside was the color of creek mud and it was stone cold.

      Julianne looked out the window at the rising sun beginning to illuminate her barren back yard. She had a few small trees out there–saplings, really–but little else, and she thought the grass might need to be cut. Her eyes involuntarily wandered beyond her own house to the well-trimmed back yards of neighbors’ houses lined in neat rows up and down the curving street, where swing sets, above-ground swimming pools, trampolines and a scattering of plastic toys littered the yards.

      In a couple of days, when school let out, the neighborhood would be filled with the sounds of children laughing and playing, parents talking and yelling, lawnmowers and weed whackers growling and dogs barking, and the air would fill with the aroma of charcoal smoke, swimming pool chemicals, blooming flowers and freshly cut grass.

      She started crying again.