He showed up at her house with a ragged white rose in one hand and a children’s book in the other. He knocked on the door and her sister let him in with a glare. She watched from the door as he made his way, unushered, up the familiar stairs and down the narrow hallway to her bedroom.
He saw her curled in a ball beneath a worn blanket. She looked thin and pale, like she was born to be thin and pale. She lay turned away from the door and he wasn’t sure if she was sleeping. He couldn’t bring himself to enter her room.
It had all changed for them. He wasn’t welcome in that room anymore, in that bed. He hung in the doorway, staring at her, her back to him. Even though she faced the opposite wall, he felt a million eyes boring into his head. Suffocating, he stood outside the baby blue room with the overflowing bookcases and the empty, rusted birdcage.
A chair scraped across a stone tiled floor downstairs, rousing him from his trance. It didn’t matter if she was asleep or awake; he couldn’t stand there forever. He quietly fought his way into the room, approached the bed, and sat on the floor. From where he sat, the bed was at eye-level and he rested his back on the chipped end table.
She was awake. He could hear her gently crying, motionless beneath the bare blanket. He traced with his eyes the pattern of footsteps in the dust on the hardwood, his eyes settling on the barren birdcage. The bronze bars were bent and the decorative spiral patterned door was hanging off the hinges.
He stared at the book in his hand. She’d told him of when her mother read it to her; when her pet bird had died. It had princesses and dragons and happily-ever-after. He’d wanted to read it to her now, but he had a feeling he wouldn’t get the chance.
She turned over in bed to face him slowly, groaning, struggling. He wanted to help, to put his hands on her to turn her toward where he sat. She finally settled with her face right next to his. She dried the tears from her swollen, but drilling eyes and now set them on him.
He flinched, almost turning away under the weight of her glance, until she turned her gaze to the flower, until she opened her mouth.
“It’s a little late for that isn’t it?” She said before groaning and turning back towards the wall, away from him. With a timid start he raised himself from the floor, placed the book on the end table and left the bedroom.
As he walked down the stairs and left the house the afternoon was cold. The sun struggled to break the white, mountainous clouds.
Magpie's Gone By J. M. DeMarco
Short Story