Sarah slipped across the threshold of Ruth Clumpit’s back door. Voices— distant, surreal—drifted from the restaurant in front, like fog along a river.
“I’m glad you came.” Ruth drew near and gave her a quick embrace.
Just like Momma would.
“I got a room all ready for you.”
“A room?” Sarah’s voice sounded to her as though she were in a different place, watching but not participating.
“I’ve got extra blankets on the bed.” The woman guided her through the house, into a small room with a bed and a side table.
Drab plank walls stared back at Sarah. In her bedroom back home, her mother painted butterflies and flowers above the wainscoting. And on the ceiling, clouds against a blue sky. Her mother. So artistic. Perhaps in her new house she could do the same. But her house burned down.
Sarah whimpered.
“I’ll be sleeping in the next room.” Ruth eased Sarah onto the bed. She took a patchwork quilt of pastel colors and wrapped it around Sarah’s shoulders.
Sarah snuggled into the quilt’s warmth as though she were a child again. … So tired. So empty.
Ruth moved to the door and tapped the frame with her fingernails, like a woodpecker in a tree by Sarah’s home in Ontario.
Ontario. Oh, how she longed to return.
“Would you like something to eat?”
The smell of her mother’s fresh bread—warm, luscious. Sarah smiled and licked her lips.
“Perhaps some tea?”
Tea. Rosehip tea made from the roses in her mother’s garden in Ontario. Sarah closed her eyes to drink in the memory of the aroma. She inhaled lavender. Her mother used lavender water. Momma, I’m coming home.
The soft bed on which she sat, so much like her bed at home. And she could almost see her dolls on the bench beneath the window sill.
Ruth tsked. “Perhaps you should sleep.” She pulled Sarah’s boots off.
Just like Momma would do.
Sarah could hear Momma’s laughter as she exclaimed over her muddy boots. Did you decide to be a piggy, little one? Her mother’s round face lit up the room.
Ruth lifted Sarah’s legs—Momma did that—and Sarah lay back against fluffy down pillows. Sensing the blankets drawn over her, she burrowed into their warmth.
“You rest now, dear.”
“Yes Momma.”
“I’ll check on you in the morning.” Steps moved to the door. “And bring you breakfast.”
“With strawberry jam, Momma? You know how I love strawberry jam.”
“Yes dear.”
The leaves would just be turning color now. She’d climb a tree in the morning and watch the ducks fly by. Perhaps Daddy would take her for a horse ride along Shanty Bay. Perhaps, in the morning, she’d watch the sunrise.