The Elf Widow

Pebbles

The first time David saw Aubrey, it didn't occur to him that she was beautiful. He looked up from his computer screen to see a wisp of a girl staring at him through the farmhouse window. Everything about her was pale—from her lightly freckled skin to her fifties-style vintage dress—everything, that is, except for her hair. That was a startling mass of  rippling red curls. 

Wow. The only way she could look more Gaelic is if she were wearing a tam o'shanter.

His unexpected visitor gave a little wave, and David grimaced. She's come about the internship, he told himself, but that had already gone to a different high school girl—and according to the figures he'd been toiling over on his spreadsheet, he'd have to scrimp on stocking the office with coffee and toilet paper before he could pay her the promised stipend.

I'll just tell Miss Scotland there thank you but no thank you. Then he could get back to the quandary of how he could keep his faltering start-up, Kate's Time, running long enough to attract more funding. 

Then his visitor smiled and lifted her delicate little chin. With that tiny movement, the porch light caught her unruly hair and turned it bronze.

David gripped his knees. He stayed in that position as she left the window frame. When he heard four confident knocks, he shook himself, pushed up from his chair and strode forward to answer the door.

He budged it a crack. Before he could open his mouth, she caught the edge of the door and swung it wide. She tilted her head back to meet his eyes. "So, you're the new man of the house."

"Pardon?"

"I don't always meet them. With some families, I just come and go without them being aware I was ever here at all."

"What are you talking about?" David stared down at her.  On closer inspection, she looked older than he'd thought, late twenties at least, closer to his own age. He felt an odd sense of relief, though he couldn't say why.

"I'm Aubrey. Aubrey Wisheart. I work here."

David's eyebrows drew together. For the first time he noticed she was holding a wood-handled mop in one hand and an old steel bucket in the other.

Oh, God, he thought. She cleaned for the previous tenants, so she expects to do the same for the new ones. "I'm sorry. We're on a tight budget. Maybe in the future... If we get some funding." If, he repeated to himself. Never again would he give into the New Age mantra of believe and it will come.

Aubrey jiggled her head. "Oh, you don't pay me."

"I don't? You mean... your services are included in the lease?"

"Something like that." Aubrey jostled her way past. 

He turned to watch her stride across the room. "I'm David, by the way."

"Aye. Castlellaw. I know."

Cleaning service included. They'd really lucked out. On the verge of eviction from their smart modern offices in the Glasgow Business Incubator Industrial Park, his partner Jack had located this alternative—a refurbished farmhouse a mile out of town. Eighteenth century, five rooms,  but with their previous staff of seventy-two cut back to a core six, a thousand square feet was more than enough.

The smart thing to do would be renegotiate with Old Man Ferguson, see how much he could knock off from their monthly if they did the janitorial themselves. But Aubrey looked so at home as she hung her coat on the old-fashioned coat rack that he didn't have the heart to tell her to go away. Oddly, her bucket was already filled with soap and water. When she dipped her mop, it came out bubbly.