Free The Color of Ordinary Time by Virginia Voelker Page B

sale on Sunday. You have to come taste one,” she said from the door.
    “But it’s Tuesday,” I said, without thinking. Mrs. Clack shot me a look that left me six inches shorter.
    “If they are for the bake sale, perhaps I should leave them
for
the sale,” said Pastor Brett.
    “Don’t be silly. They have to have your approval,” said Mrs. Clack, as she grabbed his arm and started to pull him back out, into the sanctuary.
    Was it my imagination, or did Pastor Brett roll his eyes as he was drawn away?

Eight
    My third personal ritual of summer vacations was not something I was proud of. I would break into my father’s house.
    The little, whiteish house on Stern street was out on a gravel road on the edge of town. The backyard was large, and unfenced. There was an old metal clothesline near the house that was strung, not with clothes line, but with yellow electrical wire. Why? Because someone had donated wire, and not clothesline. There is a large wood pile behind the garage, with an ax hanging under the eaves.
    I parked down the street and made my way down the road, into the back yard. The back door key was under an overturned flower pot that sat on the little square of pavement separating the door from the back yard. I wouldn’t need it. My father rarely bothered to lock the back door. I guess he figured it was hardly worth it. We’d never really had anything worth stealing. As I turned the dark brown knob it squeaked and the glass in the door wobbled eerily. I paused to wave at Mrs. Masters, my father’s neighbor to the left. She was watching me out her kitchen window. When I waved she did not wave back, just let her curtain fall back into place. She was the neighborhood watch. I didn’t know if she reported me to my father or not. I doubted it. They were not friends. She liked to sleep in on Sunday, and all the singing over at my father’s garage woke her often.
    As I stepped in, closing the door behind me, a small shiver passed through me. The kitchen had not changed since I had left. Same rusting, retro white and red table. Same meant-to-be-sunny yellow linoleum. Same white cabinets, and white walls. There was a new tile missing from the yellow and white backsplash over the scratched sink. Even the same white dish rack, and glass canisters full of rice, and beans on the white counters. I checked the yellow refrigerator for food. There was a carton of milk, already spoiled, and a loaf of homemade bread already molding. That was it. I closed the fridge, leaving them there, and moved into the living room.
    The old wood stove still stood in the corner. The old quilt still lay over the sagging once-blue couch, and my father’s cracked and faded leather armchair still sat in its corner. I didn’t pause in the living room to study anything more closely. I had a goal in mind.
    Up the front stairs. I tripped slightly on the hole in the faded runner on the fifth stair, then made it safely to the landing. To the right lay my old room, now stripped of anything that had once been mine. To the left, my father’s room. I paused in the familiar dim hallway to take a deep breath. I carefully entered my father’s room.
    Again, I did not pause to look around, but simply knelt before the battered fourth-hand chest of drawers, and opened the bottom drawer. Under the patched, moth-eaten sweaters, tucked away at the back, there was an old, slightly torn manila envelope. In the envelope were three pictures. The first was a tiny young woman standing next to a tall man who looked slightly older than her. She is dressed in a long white wedding dress, he is in a dark blue suite. They look happy. The date on the back is March 1977. The second picture is the same young woman sitting, smiling in a hospital bed. She is holding a baby wrapped in a light blue blanket. She is glowing with joy. The third picture is only half a picture really. The same young woman stands on a front lawn smiling. She looks tired in this one. Like there is