The First Apartment

by Sherry Roberts

About the Author: Sherry Roberts is the author of award-winning mysteries and fiction. Down Dog Diary, Warrior’s Revenge, and Crow Calling are all Minnesota mysteries with a yoga spirit. In Book of Mercy, a dyslexic woman fights a North Carolina town banning books. Maud’s House is the story of a Vermont artist who loses and finds her creativity. Sherry has contributed essays and short stories to national publications such as USA Today and anthologies including Saint Paul Almanac, Minnesota Not So Nice and others.

Excerpt

We began our life together feasting on grilled cheese sandwiches in a cold and lonely Minnesota bus depot. I loved my new husband, Lars Larson, but I truly missed the luxurious warmth of my grandmother’s Thanksgiving table: the glow of candles, the delicious aroma of the turkey, the camaraderie of my legion of cousins who couldn’t pass the yams without a generous portion of outlandish storytelling.

Shivering in a paper-thin coat that had been quite adequate back home in Georgia, I watched more snow than I ever dreamed existed pile up on the streets outside. “What if it doesn’t stop?” I worried.

Lars, the idiot who lured me here, just laughed. “Eat up. We should get back to the Ho Hum before the roads get bad.”

You might have already guessed: the Ho Hum Hotel was not the Ritz.

And so began my life in a foreign land, also called Last Chance, Minnesota.

The next day we set out with two missions: buy a warm winter coat to replace my Southern jacket and procure our first apartment. It was Friday, and our furniture was scheduled to arrive on Monday. That’s when we discovered Last Chance had a housing shortage.

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