40 - Kathleen
A round tear splattered on the freshly sanded floor.
“Oh, I, I, didn’t,” Maeve blurted.
Her hands clasped and unclasped. Her eyes shone with a film of tears. She gulped, and sniffed to pull in the tears, to no avail. More tears rolled on her cheek and fell on the dry maple boards.
“I had t-thought he would have been happy… someone finished his work,” Maeve said in a meek voice.
She was looking at her dust-covered feet, a pose eerily familiar. And she seemed to melt herself, her shoulders rounding and knees folding until she was prostrated on the floor, her face invisible, except for the tears falling.
A memory came, of Stella regretting-oh-so-regretting the tumbled chocolate cake that I had prepared for Bryan’s birthday. (The two-story cake had fallen on its soft icing
