Funny to discover him lying on the floor, a good decade after he had disappeared from my daily life. I was beginning to muse on the sadness of it all when I heard the key turn in the latch, locking it by accident, then rotating to unlock and carefully nudge the door open.
“Harry?” her voice creaked slowly.
I rushed to get up and the wooden planks creaked beneath me as I paced towards her voice – “mrs mulligan, yeah hey. …”
She knew before I even had the chance to gently lead her into the foyer. I was sorry for her. She swooned a little and fell into me, forcing me back before steadied the both of us.
She shuffled her feet towards the couch and collapsed onto the gaudy pink cushions while I stood, slightly dumbfounded.
“Well, I’ll have to call the police” I murmured.
Jeff was still in the back room, I could hear him rummaging around as I made my way towards the kitchen. I tested the phone on the wall. No signal.
I burrowed into the pocket of my suit jacket and brought out my phone, hesitantly dialing. I stopped myself before sending the police call and keyed in a message to Jeff instead. Something along the lines of “vamoose, now’s a bad time”. Hopefully he would look at it, and hopefully nobody would look too hard at my phone records.
