A girl lay on the sofa, flipping through a magazine without really reading or looking at the pictures. She flipped too quickly and was only doing so to look as if she were not angry.
"It will only be a few weeks," said her mother. "I'll be back before you know it. I'll even bring you a souvenir!" The girl said nothing and just flipped past a few more pages. "Look," the mother said frustrated, and upset "I'm almost 40! I've never been married and all these years I've been spending all my time raising you, and now you're twenty. If I want to go off to California to spend a month in a vineyard with my boyfriend then I think you should just do the adult thing and let me!"
The girl mumbled something under her breath, into her magazine. "What was that," the mother asked. Silence. "Catherin Louise Sunbury, what did you say?"
"I said," Catherin said finally with a raised voice, putting down her magazine, "That it wouldn't bother me so much if this weren't your fifth month-long vacation with your ninth boyfriend this year! I said that I wouldn't be annoyed if they paid for any of it, and I said that I shouldn't have to be the only adult in this house! If you want to gallivant about with boys, you go ahead, but don't make excuses and lie to yourself that it's okay because you were an awesome mother. If you want to go, that's fine just don't expect me to kiss you farewell. While you walk out that door, I am going to sit here, on this couch and read about the women in Nigeria and all the stuff that they do."
"Fine. If that's how you're going to be, then I'm just going to leave. You stay in a snit. It's not my problem." The mother picked up her many bags, some with straps over her shoulders, some with handles being held, and left. Catherin was flipping through her magazine once more but could feel a breeze from the open front door blowing in. She heard her mom's car doors open and close, the engine start, and finally the car drove off. Finally she was alone.
She put her magazine down and got up to close the door. It was a beautiful autumn day outside. The weather this year had been fairly erratic and it was a sunny sixty degrees. The cats were playing with fallen leaves as they blew about in the wind. It was mid-afternoon so they would need to come in soon, once the sun started to set.
Her mom and she had inherited her grandmother's country home a few years ago, since then the orchard had shriveled and they had lost three cats. Since the last one had gone, Catherin tried to get them in before it got even dim outside. She had been chasing after it and had to act quickly in order to leap over a huge ditch she barely noticed in the darkness. Later she had tried to find the hole, but it was nowhere to be found. The cats would need to come in very soon, she shuddered to herself, creepy black pits that came and left as they pleased were more than her mind could bare. There had always been something eerie about this old house. Not the house itself so much, other than floors and walls and a roof the creaked, but there was always a looming feeling that something was not right there. An odd feeling of other-worldliness.