3

The house was quiet. If she’d been coming home to her parents, she would have expected the front door to fling wide open almost as soon as she pulled up and her mother flying down the walk, long hair flapping in the breeze, before she could get out of the car. Maybe it was just because she was the baby, but her parents had always been enthusiastic to see Molly come home after any kind of absence, even just a sleep over or a weekend school trip. As it was, not even a curtain fluttered. Certainly Aunt Alice wasn’t going to roll out to greet her, even if she did like or even approve of Molly, she was still new at the whole wheelchair thing. That much she knew from Mike. Seventeen months older than her, Mike was shorter and more muscular, sweeter and more lovable, as well as smarter (although less ambitious and thus less accomplished) with a more palatable wit, than Molly. This melt-in-your-mouth wit was Molly’s primary source of information on the prickles and prudery of Aunt Alice. It also made Mike everyone’s firm favorite, especially Aunt Alice. He had the great luck to live 45 minutes up the freeway, close enough to visit but enough distance to not be one of those gnats Aunt Alice was always straining at.

Molly found herself smiling to herself and humming “There was an old lady who swallowed a fly…” as she bent over to pull her suitcase out of the trunk.

“You’re late.” The song startled in Molly’s throat, modulating into a squeak. Her suitcase banged off the bumper to the ground and on her foot. The words were not unkind but still held the distinct sharpness of Aunt Alice.

“But you’re here” she muttered as she rolled back behind the shadowed hedge that led to the backyard.

“I was lost.” Molly whispered to her suitcase in her tiniest of voices, the kind she usually reserved for when her inner dialogue was too brilliant to not be spoken out loud but not meant for anyone’s ears (but also for when she was in unexpected pain and needed to curse and not be heard). Either her tiny voice was not so tiny or Aunt Alice’s ears where making up for other deficits because Molly thought she heard a snort and a snarling rhetorical “was?” come from the shadows nearest Aunt Alice. Unsure of the cause, Molly felt her eyes water. Could she do this?