Unattended

The furrowed brow hid her happiness. She did neither of the things an onlooker would assume from the concern spread across her face – she was not wrestling with some nagging problem, nor was she acutely interested in the surface of the table she appeared to be studying. There was a decision to be made though, and the longer she prevaricated, the warmer the glow of satisfaction that spread through her tired body.

Tracing a line through the spilt sugar A. mused on the unlikely chain of events that had brought her this far. She would tell people, I’m just a normal girl, I like to be at home. This had always been true. From an early age her parents had had to entice her from the house. Threats and promises were used for school days. The weather was the reason on weekends.
“Look at all your friends out there in the street Angelito! Such a lovely spring day. Where are your shoes?”
She had always assumed that the children in the street were there simply because their homes were unpleasant, different to hers. This made her father’s shoe search seem cruel and unnecessary. She took to hiding her shoes in the dog kennel, until one day he ate a left trainer and a right flip flop.

The automated drone of an announcement reminding passengers not to leave baggage unattended reminded her not of her fake Louis Vuitton shoulder bag, but of him. He seemed ever present, there or not there. He had collected all the pieces of her and put them together to make somebody new, something new. An us, a togetherness she had not known or experienced before. He listened, he talked, he collected. Now it was made and seemed whole. She would marry him and let their children play inside all day, whether the sun shone or the rain clouds gathered.