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door, grime on the windows as if they hadn’t been cleaned in
years.
No curtains…
No entry mat…
No wind chime…
She hesitated, trying to make sense of what she was seeing. She
felt odd and curiously weightless, as if she were in a waking
dream. The closer she got, the more the house seemed to decay
before her.
She blinked and noticed that the door was cracked down the
middle with a two-by-four hammered across it, bracing it to the
crumbling casing.
She blinked again and saw that part of the wall, up in the corner,
had rotted away, leaving a jagged hole.
She blinked a third time and realized that the lower half of the
window was cracked and broken; pieces of glass littered the
porch.
Katie climbed onto the porch, unable to stop herself. Leaning in,
she peered through the windows into the darkened cottage.
Dust and dirt, broken furniture, piles of garbage. Nothing painted,
nothing cleaned. All at once, Katie stepped back on the porch,
almost stumbling off the broken step. No. It wasn’t possible, it just
wasn’t. What had happened to Jo, and what about all the
improvements she’d made on the small cottage? Katie had seen Jo
hang the wind chime. Jo had been over to her house, complaining
about having to paint and clean. They’d had coffee and wine and
cheese and Jo had teased Katie about the bicycle. Jo had met her
after work and they’d gone to a bar. The waitress had seen them
both. Katie had ordered both of them wine…