It was one of those perfect days you sometimes got in an English summer. It was pleasantly warm, but not too hot, and the sky was a deep sapphire blue with fluffy white clouds.
Edith Lawson, 82 years old, sat on the edge of her beat-up settee, the faded upholstery scratching against her legs.
From the fifth floor of her council block, she could see the grey rooftops of Liverpool rolling toward the river.
She wrapped her woollen shawl tighter and closed her eyes. How many mornings had she spent like this; alone, surveying a city that carried on without her and waiting for a nice lady from the Council to help her into the shower. They were never the same one twice; she remembered the West Indian lady had been especially nice.
A shaft of silvery light caught on the tarnished locket at her throat. Inside, a faded photograph of a boy with tousled hair, her only child, smiled against a summer sky.
She saw again the day she let him go, having to, fearing her marriage wouldn’t survive otherwise. The letter from the adoption agency felt like a final judgment. She’d missed birthdays and first words, replaced by lonely evenings in a cramped flat.
All these years, she’d measured her life by its mistakes: love withheld, risks unclaimed, journeys untaken. Now, in this quiet moment, she had a perfect sense of an ending.
The kettle clicked behind her, Edith slumped on the settee, the tea would go unmade.
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Words: Richard Rooney
Illustration: A.I.
Flash Fiction 250
Flash Fiction 250 