“Did you really think everything would be just as it was?” Harvey mused. “Everything arranged in the language of the storm. All your belongings strewn about the room for anyone to pry and contemplate. What did you expect, little girl? Did you really think the storm wouldn’t hit you?” he sneered, standing in the middle of Bertha’s room.
The twenty first century has its distinctions. These houses were built, say, seventy-eight years ago. The rooms are shapely, the ceiling hung low; over the doorways a scripture or Noah’s ark is carved into the wood. Even the panels, painted in Caribbean Sea blue-coloured paint, have their distinction.
Harvey took up a bill for a canoe.
“That seems to be paid,” he said.
There were children’s toys.
Mrs. Flores was taking a party to Austin.
Great Aunt Lila hoped for the pleasure…
Listless is the air in an empty room, just swelling the curtains, the floorboards, the books, the clothes and the windows. The decayed leaves in the ceil shift. One fibre in the wicker armchair creaks, though no one sits there.
Harvey crossed to the window. Marquez’s van swung down the street. The omnibuses were locked together at Shaver’s corner. Engines throbbed, and bikes, jamming the breaks down, pulled their baskets sharp up. A desperate and unhappy voice cried something unintelligible. And then suddenly all the leaves seemed to raise themselves in clustered circles.
“Bertha! Bertha!” cried Harvey, standing by the window. The leaves sank down again.
“Such chaos!” exclaimed Elizabeth Houston, bursting open the bedroom door. Harvey turned away from the window.
“What am I to do with this, Mr. Harvey?”
She held out a piece of a little girl’s arm.
THE END