ARRvol34 master reduced - Flipbook - Page 43
leaves until the rain stops.”
The man didn’t answer. He ran for the door, dodging past the
other visitors and casting one last fearful look at the ceiling. Lucy
continued with the vegetables as the front door slammed open
and the young man disappeared—poof—at last. Lucy smiled and
listened as the heavy lock clicked into place behind him. Directly
beside her, one of the visitors dragged themselves into a chair at the
kitchen table.
“Michael?” Lucy dropped her knife and turned to face the rugged
old man behind her. “I was wondering when you would come out
again.”
Michael sighed and slumped down in his chair, sniffing at the air.
“This storm’s giving me a headache. You don’t happen to know
when it’ll end, huh?”
Lucy shook her head. “You want some tea while we wait for the
rain to stop?”
“My wife used to make me chamomile tea in storms like these,”
Michael said dreamily, “She had this blue ceramic teapot that her
mother made or gave to her, I don’t remember... I broke it on accident. All of it was an accident.”
Michael glanced at Lucy hopefully, waiting to be assured. She
said nothing. Soon enough, these visitors would learn that their lies
would get them nowhere. She pressed the flat of her thumb against
one of the cracks in the blue ceramic teapot in her hands. The
cracks were deep and stretched around the entire base of the teapot,
almost as if someone had collected the fragments and tried to glue
them back together. Michael looked up at the ceiling—what was
it about that ceiling? —as the new visitor’s muffled sobs floated in
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