Inhale

Lindsey

     The taxi pulls into the drive of the house, my beaten hybrid abandoned back at the house in Gardner. The snow seems to have died down a bit for now, but the ground is still covered in densely packed ice. I step out of the car, fumbling with my keys to open the front door. It opens with a sad creak.

     "Ash?" I call up the stairs for her, but I don't get a response. She's probably out with her friends, I assure myself, though I know it will only be about five minutes before I go to check on her out of impulse, anyway, so I make the ascent.          At the top of the stairs, I knock on Ashlynn's door, and hear a muffled "What?" before opening the door and stepping inside.

     Boxes litter the floor around the bed which Ashlynn lays face-down upon.

     "Baby?" I ask, concern shooting through me.

     "Uh-huh?"

     "Are you okay?" She lifts her face off the pillow, and I can see that her eyes are bloodshot and that her face is a puffy red. Even if I didn't know the signs that someone had been crying back a few weeks ago, I know them all too well, now. I reach forward and wrap my arms around her, cradling her head on my shoulder.

     "Is it her?" I ask.

     "No," she sniffs. "It's Chris."

     "What happened, honey?"

     "He got into a fight with one of the guys at the coffee shop after I told him we were leaving."

I sigh.   
      "I'm so sorry, Ashlynn. But, you know, guys are just funny like that. I swear, they don't ever know the difference between what's good for you and what's good for them. At least, your father didn't. That's probably why he's somewhere in Austria right now dancing with some other blonde French fry of a woman." I glare at the wall, memories flashing through my head of thrown object and slammed doors. 

     "You're right." Ash mutters. "Men suck." I laugh bitterly. I wait a few moments before bringing up my day.

      "So, I went and saw the house today." She looks up at me.

     "How was it?"

     "Well, I'm not going to lie to you. It could use some fixing up. But if living there is anything like a conversation with our real estate agent, I think it's worth a try." She gives me a confused look that makes me laugh.

     "So, are we moving there?" She asks.

     "At the moment, the agreement is that we have is we go to live there for a week. If we like it, we stay. If not, it gets sold to the highest bidder." She crawls out from under my arms and stretches.

     "Guess I'd better get packed, then."

     "I suppose I should too, since we're leave tomorrow morning," I respond.

     It doesn't take long to locate everything I want to bring for the week, and so I use the rest of the evening pushing the furniture in the house into the living room for the moving trucks to take on Friday. At the very least, if we decide to move, we won't have to make the drive all the way back here for our things, I think to myself reassuringly.

     At around nine, I have pizza delivered, which is the only time through the night I see Ashlynn emerge from her room. After she takes her food, she hurries back up the stairs and shuts the door behind her.

     Teenagers. I shake my head disapprovingly. They make no sense sometimes.

     A few times during the night, I can hear the Ashlynn's phone going off upstairs, but I never hear the murmur of voices. Instead, I head a THUMP, as if a something is being thrown at the wall. I sigh and continue grabbing boxes, pretending I don't hear a thing.

***