The door creaked terribly when Moira finally got the door to open. It was totally stuck and she had to use a lot of force to open the attic door. If anyone had been hiding upstairs, the terrible racket would have chased them away by now.
Moira stepped inside the attic and looked around.
"There is more stuff in here than I thought, this is going to take a few days of sorting." She thought to herself.
Plenty of boxes were stacked up on the one side and there were bookshelves full of old books on the other. In front of her was an old chest of drawers and many suitcases piled up on top of it. What fascinated Moira the most was the old trunk standing in the one corner.
On the opposite side was a large window and the sun lit up the room. She could see every inch of the room, but with the large amount of boxes stacked up to the roof, it would be the ideal hiding place for anyone, Moira thought to herself and stamped her feet to make some noise.
"Come out come out wherever you are..." she whispered and then shrieked when a bird flew up and escaped through the broken side window. There was no one.
She laughed at herself for being so scared. There was nothing up here, except old stuff and dust. The attic has not been cleaned in over twenty years, and perhaps even longer. She never came up here as a child, and it was only later as a teenager that she discovered that the attic even existed. Her grandfather had to pack away some things for her grandmother once and she found him halfway up the stairs. She was on her way out to meet Billy her best friend, so she did not take much notice of it.
Moira sat down on one of the chairs after using a piece of clothing to dust it. Clouds of dust caused her to sneeze terribly and she knew she had to get out before she had some kind of asthma attack. She caught a glimpse of herself in the full-length mirror next to the chair, and could see that her eyes were already red and swollen and the sneezing wasn't going to stop soon.
She got up and shook of her jeans, and then turned around to climb down the stairs. She never saw the pair of eyes staring back at her in the mirror.
She climbed down in such a hurry that her foot slipped on the ladder. Luckily she kept her balance and landed on her feet, safely in the hallway.
"Perhaps some fresh air would do the trick." Moira thought and grabbed her handbag on the way out the back door. She took out an allergy tablet from her handbag and swallowed it with the cold coffee still standing on the porch, and nearly spit it out because of the taste.
"I need to make a list of everything that I'm going to need. If I start cleaning the attic, then I'm going to be stuck here for days."
She quickly made a list on her cell phone and then grabbed the keys to her grandfather's old station wagon, but the car was as dead as a door nail. She made a mental note to have the car checked out and then grabbed her handbag and walked down the road.
It was a very small town, and she didn't really need a car, but it would be nice to drive and not to walk everywhere she went. As teenagers they walked everywhere, and even late at night she and Billy used to go down to the river to take a swim.
"I wonder what happened to Billy?" she thought to herself.
After high school they both went their separate ways, and she never heard from him again. She was as much to blame as he was, but when she went to college she made new friends, and Billy didn't seem so important anymore. Billy never came to visit her, and then she met Alex. The most handsome prince on a white horse and he promised her the moon....and look where that got her. Right back in this little godforsaken town that she fought so hard to get away from.
She will never forget that day when she and Billy said goodbye to each other down at the river. It felt like her life was going to end but she knew that she couldn't stay there, and she had to get out of town. She kept on waiting for him to come visit, but he never came. After a few months she lost hope and her new friends took his place in her heart.
Moira walked past the bakery and if by remote control she let her nose lead her inside the shop. There is nothing better than the smell of freshly baked bread, and she bought enough bread to last her for a few days. Stacked with an arm full of bread she walked past the diner and realized that she was ravishing. She decided to have breakfast before going to the shop and when she walked inside, she had that familiar feeling of dejavu.
She and Billy used to come here all the time, and they spent hours chatting and drinking milkshakes. She stared across the shop and saw that their table was still there. She decided to go sit there and placed the bread on the seat next to her. She ordered a stack of pancakes and was just about to take the first bite when she heard the door open. It was a woman, pushing a man in a wheelchair. She instantly felt sorry for the man, and couldn't think of herself spending her whole life in a wheelchair.
At first she didn't recognize the woman, but she did look awfully familiar. Then it struck her like lightning. It was Billy's little sister, Vera. Beautiful little Vera, the same little sister that annoyed them so much when she and Billy smoked behind the shed.
She smiled at the thought and wondered if Vera would recognize her. It has been eleven years already and for some people that is a lifetime. Moira's eyes drifted towards the man, but she couldn't see his face clearly, and it was only when Vera turned the chair that she looked him straight in the face.
His face totally lit up when he saw her, and quickly wheeled himself over to the table. They kept eye contact the whole time, and when he stopped right next to the table it was as if nothing ever changed.
"You came back."
-To be continued-
