Sisters Part 3

A warm welcome by Mary’s family followed by a light supper and Helen, at Mary’s urging, settled into the guest bedroom earlier than she would normally retire. She felt the tensions of her life slip away as she settled into the comfort of the pliable guest room bed. The rural home of her sister felt strange to her city adapted senses. How long had it been since she had experienced this level of quiet and peace? She asked herself. But there were subtle differences in her sister’s home too, shutters on all the windows, which Mary’s husband closed up as the sun went down, reinforced steel doors with heavy duty deadbolts had replaced the decorative wooden front and rear doors scavenged from an old farm house and her niece Becky had gone out of the way to show her how easy it was to pull the ladder down to gain access to the attic leaving her with a sense of uneasy vigilance underneath the harmony and warmth her sister exuded. 

She smiled in the dim light of evening as she thought about her nieces and nephew, they had been so young the last time she saw them and now, here they were fast becoming adults ready to take on the world.

Helen closed her eyes, luxuriating in the comfort of the old bed and sank into the deepest sleep she had experienced in a long time. The moonlight slipped through the window where the curtains gapped, throwing a soft streak of light across the floor ending at the bottom of the door. In the hallway could be heard the subtle swish of stocking feet on the carpeted floor. They came to a halt outside the bedroom door. The click of a key turning penetrated the quiet and the sleeping woman shifted in her bed before settling back into the depths of slumber. A moment of stillness pervaded the room and then the stocking feet whished away from the closed door.

In her sleep Helen mumbled about protecting her family, about keeping herself away from others, shaking her head back and forth until she woke herself and opened her eyes. She frowned at the dark ceiling above her unsure in the first moments of transition from sleep to wakefulness of where she was. Restless from the vague, distressing, fragmented dreams fading from her consciousness she rubbed her damp forehead and considered getting up for a glass of water. Everything was quiet, unmoving in the stillness of the late hour as a swath of luminous moonlight climbed up the door marking the passage of time. The slumbering house soothed her unease and she drifted back into a dreamless sleep.