Everything seems a little more hazy than usual. I can barely make out the woman on the screen. Is she straightening a sheet of news reports? Shuffling a deck of cards? I'm honestly not sure.
There is a water stain on my fork. There always is, in the exact same place. It is, in fact, the same stain. The food is the same tonight. The dishes are identical to the last time I sat down to dinner in this house.
The three of us talk about meaningless gossip and the weather. After dinner I apologize for having to leave so abruptly. She apologizes that the cookies aren't finished in the oven. They never are. They never will be. Evelyn has never eaten a cookie in her life. Whatever fills my mailbox would like me to think that the crumbly cookies, cake, and bread are from her. But a mailman has never come to that box. Never. One day I camped out in front of it to see, and no one showed. The mail came just the same. The cookies are not harmful and quite delicious, so I eat the sweet sugary lies in silence, and don't mention it to anyone else.
I take a deep breath of the cool night air. It is much clearer outside, and I wave goodbye to the lit doorway where Evelyn waves back. My eyes widen, and I turn abruptly back to the road. Outside of the house, the air is clear. Inside, dust hangs absolutely motionless in the air. I definitely won't mention this to anybody else, though I will notice each time I return to the old house. Perhaps much older than I assumed.
No wonder the flowers in the town square are so endlessly flawless.
