Addie In The Storm

Today's Free Write - Fiction:

Addie saw the good in people, until she didn’t. Her corn silk curls clipped back from blush-kissed cheeks and eyes like gray-blue pearls, she walked the way a girl might walk who knew there was somebody watching. Shoulders back. Hips swaying a bit more than usual. Thin smile. And her sister Myra envied every last look from every town boy they’d known growing up on the red dirt farm her parents inherited from grandpa Mooresby.

That was before.

Myra sat next to her mother on the porch swing, cross-stitched an orange cat under the lettering Welcome Home on a pillow for her daughter. She actually sucked in her breath when she looked up to see Addie stride up the porch steps. “Well, if it ain’t miss big city come home to the farm.” She dropped her stitching needle, grabbed her sister up in a hug that nearly smothered the pretty girl. “We need to get some meat on these bones. Mama, look at this skinny sister of mine. She’ll blow away on a summer breeze.”

All Addie could think was with the plum-pit of regret in her belly and the words ‘he’s gone’ tied round her ankles like an anchor there was no chance of blowing away. Her sorrow weighed twice as much as she did.

Addie watched her mother. Watched her tears come and her mouth gape open to speak. To bring comfort or criticism. But no words came.

That was the thing about a homecoming. Sometimes it was just the showing up that mattered most. Even when there was nothing anybody could say to make it better.