CHAPTER ONE-3
383 Words
ONCE THE POLICE LEFT, peace fell over the little suburb street again. However, this time, silence didn’t comfort the residents, as before.
People didn’t feel safe there anymore. They weren’t uninformed. They read the papers and followed the news and knew such things happened in other places all the time. Yet, nothing similar had ever happened so close to home.
Suddenly, their peace had been destroyed. Preservation made them focus on their lives and bury what they had witnessed earlier in a corner of their mind.
Only Doris remained there, in the middle of things. She kept looking out the window in the night, intent on finding out what had led to her husband’s death.
This time, she didn’t feel any curiosity towards what was going on in the street. But she thought it was her duty to find out why her husband had died.
She felt guilty. She had pushed him out of the house. He never would have gone out otherwise. He wasn’t a curious person and he loved his personal comfort.
At the same time, she felt lonely, hollow and deserted. She hadn’t been in love with her husband anymore. That was true. Too much time had passed, and life had been somewhat dull for the two of them for years now. Yet, she’d cared for him.
Right then, she thought they had been meant to be together in a way, and ultimately, they’d had a good life together.
Doris knew he was at the morgue now. She shivered when she thought he was lying on a cold slab.
To make things worse, she hadn’t been aware his heart was weak. She’d been self-centred and hadn’t paid attention to any of his complaints about his health. She had just pushed them aside, as if they hadn’t mattered. Now it was too late to do anything.
She kept looking outside into the night. Someone was crossing the lawn, looking for something on the ground, a small flashlight in their hand.
She didn’t see who it was, but then, she didn’t care. She didn’t think she could be in any danger from the light in the room projecting her image in the dark. She merely presumed the police were still looking for evidence on the ground. Yet, the person moving in the shadows of the cloud-covered moon saw her looking out the window.
- Writer
