Some Fiction For A Drizzly Friday

The WriteAnything prompt is: A woman whose husband is killed during a tour of duty overseas decides to turn her home into a boarding house.

It had been six weeks since the grief counselor arrived on her doorstep with a box and a somber looking officer. She couldn't remember either or their names nor much of what was said. When she thought back, all she could really remember was the sensation of falling and the sound of wind rushing past her ears. She hadn't fainted. She had stood, nodding sensibly, and automatically reached to collect the box of her husband's possessions. Then she had calmly shut the door in their face, cutting off the thanks of her nation.

The box sat, untouched, in the center of the dining room table. She wasn't sure what to do with it. There was no point in opening the dam of emotion that would surely break past the thin wall she had erected around her heart when she'd heard the car pull into the drive. In the back of her mind she knew that once that flood began it would never end, so she invested every minute into keeping it at bay.

Glancing around she considered the space. They had bought the house with an eye toward the future family they hoped to have. Now it all seemed too much, though keeping things tidy certainly kept her occupied. Still, the moon colonies were becoming a vacation destination despite the uprisings, she snorted as she considered the word the newscast used to describe the all out war going on from Mare Crisium around to the dark side. Whoever had determined the names for the dry lake beds had probably no idea of their veracity. Then again, it had been over a century since the first moon colony and only in the last fifteen years had the natives revealed their presence, and their displeasure.

She tugged her thoughts back to the issue at hand. She could either return to her parent's home on earth, marking herself forever as a failed colonist and removing any opportunity to travel further from home, or she could figure out a way to make things work and at least keep up that end of their long term plans. He had always wanted to be on a deep space exploration team and had counted on his military career to get him there. She had planned to tag along, with the family, and had invested her time into childhood education. The thought of teaching sent a shudder through her. The required student teaching was as much time in a classroom that she could handle. Better to slink back to earth and bury herself in grief.

After a moment's thought, she nodded and strode purposefully to the table. She grabbed the box and stuffed it into the bottom drawer of the cupboard. The main floor would do. She hurried to the sleeping wing with a tablet and drew up a list of what would need to be done to make the rooms rentable.

She opened in just under two weeks. There was fresh tinting on the walls an locks on the bedrooms. Each room already had its own bath which had made the process considerably easier and less expensive. A message to the tourism department had resulted in an inspection and then a listing in the official guide and her first bookings. The feeling of falling was slowing and the rushing noise fading into the backgound of every day life. She was finally getting her feet back.

The bell rang. She glanced around the scrupulously clean sitting room and wiped nervous palms on her pants before fixing on the welcoming smile she'd practiced in the mirror for the last two weeks and opening the door.

Weeks later she could only remember the sensation of falling, the sound of rushing wind, over which carried the tinniest sounds of the grief counselor stuttering nervously, "There seems to have been a mix up...", and her husband's arms wrapping around her as she slid bonelessly to the floor.