visitors. Her grief was so fresh and raw she couldn’t bear to expose it. She sat on the front step, wrapped in her father’s pile-lined jacket, and looked out over the town. Busby stretched out beside her. Shunning the stew, Avy nibbled at the sandwich Lucy had forced her to take with her coffee when she’d stopped by Ma’s. It was good and seemed to settle her stomach.
As she stroked the dog’s head, she realized how much she wanted to keep Busby. He’d comforted her the night before as she drifted to sleep and had made her feel safe when she woke during the night in tears. She tore a bit of the roast beef from her sandwich and let him take it from her hand.
“I wish I could keep you, boy, but I’m sure your owner’s missing you.” The words brought the knot back to her stomach and she fed the rest of her sandwich to the dog.
Finally, she got up and went inside to begin her inspection of the mess left by her parents’ attacker. Overwhelmed the night before, she’d taken refuge in her old room which had apparently not held any interest for the intruder.
The living room seemed even worse in the daylight. Like a tornado had whipped through. Papers were strewn everywhere. An heirloom vase lay smashed on the floor amid a puddle of wilted flowers. Every drawer had been pulled out and dumped.
She stood gazing at the chaos that had been her home. She fought the overwhelming urge to turn around and run back out the door to escape. Or worse, to sink to the floor and give into the crying jag that had been threatening all day. Instead, she took a long slow breath, stretching her rib cage to its absolute limit and then exhaled very, very slowly.
She moved towards the kitchen. It was in worse condition. Tea towels had been tossed around, as had every box, bag and container from the pantry. On the counter, beside the old farmhouse-style sink, a mountain of cutlery had been dumped and the drawer flung across the room, where it landed next to the refrigerator. The flour bin had been thrown so violently against the wall that a fine white coating covered every exposed surface. On top of that, the sheriff’s team had obviously walked through the flour as they looked for fingerprints and other evidence, and tracked it through the house.
The sheriff needed to know if anything was missing. She was the only one who could tell him. She retrieved the recycle bin from the back porch and turned back to the living room. The room seemed to blur and she rubbed her eyes to clear them. Her fingers came away wet with tears. Grief is a strange thing, she thought. Her feelings were numb, yet her eyes kept leaking.
She began with the loose papers in the living room. She glanced at each piece as she picked it up. Important papers were neatly stacked and then returned to her father’s antique desk in the corner. The rest were dropped in the bin. She uncovered the desk drawer behind the sofa and pushed it back into place. Halfway in, it stuck. She pulled it back out, peeked in, and pulled out a crumpled paper that had been caught in the runner. Smoothing it out, she could see it was an insurance report. Keep, she thought, placing it on the top of the pile before moving on.
Tidying, mopping, cleaning. Busby followed her progress with his eyes from his perch on the sofa. The garbage bags piled up at the back door ready for pickup. When the kitchen and living room were done, she sat down on the sofa and assessed her progress. Everything smelled fresh and clean. Sanitized. Unfamiliar.
She stretched her arms over her head and worked the kinks out of her back. The late afternoon sun glinted off the silver on her finger. She brought her hand down for closer scrutiny.
“That’s so weird.”
Busby cocked his ear.
She tugged on the ring and it came off in one piece.
“I didn’t know the rings were made to fit together.”
She hadn’t thought about the rings since the vet mentioned them that morning. She could see now why he thought they