She

Sometimes the sun shines in a way that makes the whole sky look like it’s lined in gold. But that’s only if you look up. Looking down, all of the houses and headlights just look like SOS signals.

The road was narrow and barely recognizable as a main road apart from the crookedly drawn yellow stripes uncomfortably wedged in the middle of the asphalt. The house was perched on the edge of that crooked street corner smelled of ghosts.

The sun scorched the lawn in the summer and ignored the single shivering resident in the winter. It’s funny how the introvert had only consoled the extraverts in the last years of her life.

The house was as white as her pallor and the paint was as cracked as her dry knuckles, but there was no one left to bring the paint or the hand cream.

Her days served only the purpose of survival and she drifted in and out of all of the rooms but one:

The room’s ceiling was low and its walls were green. Floorboards were loose and chatty, and a pale blue bedspread hadn’t been washed or changed in 15 years. A record was left on the player and lightly used shoes lay under an old rocking chair. A poster of Uncle Sam and his demands lay over the brown tasseled rug, and a yellowing piece of tape hung half attached to the wall where the poster had been. Half a cookie stood as hard as a cinder block on flowered china above the dresser.

The war had killed everything.

With spring, arrived a new presence of mind and some flowers; it was the first step.

Her gray hair hung loosely beside her face as she donned a straw sunhat. Her gardening toolbox doubled as a rolling stool and leaning down, she peeled away the hard top of the soil revealing a fresh underworld with the startling possibility of life.

Children would pick the flowers, and dogs tried to understand why the house had changed scents, because before long the whole property was in full bloom. The little flower house became an attraction, and that was when the world watched the front door squeak open and the woman’s brown eyes widen.

It became a bakery.

Tables with floral tablecloths were positioned in almost every room, and when the door opened so had the emotions.

A “No Shirt No Shoes No Service” sign was nowhere to be found and in its place were the words “Your Back is My Back, Your Feet are My Feet”, and she believed that this was the single most important truth.

Tables and friends sat with their pastries around and within the tiny estate. As others spoke and released their thoughts, she listened.

Late at night she realized that the silence she heard now was not that same as it had been—but why was there such electricity to it?

Marital problems, romantic problems, drinking problems, confidence problems, physical problems, mental problems—she was the psychiatrist that would charge only the price of a warm, melt-in-your-mouth lemon sugar cookie. And although everyone departed 1,000 calories heavier, somehow shoulders emerged looking lighter.

Every room she left, she never closed the door. She enjoyed telling people that for some reason, she just didn’t like closing them.

One door however, always remained bolted, and that one door was the cause of the extra cup of salt accidentally dropped into the cookie batter. It didn’t matter that she had daily customers—they were the first to leave—and as the holes grew wider in the tablecloths, so did the ones in her heart.

The front door closed.

Although the lawn got watered everyday, the flowers in the yard slowly withered and died.

Eleven days later, so did she.

Before demolition of the broken white house, a piece of crumpled paper was stepped on:

3 cups all-purpose flour

2 teaspoons baking powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

2 cups granulated sugar

1 cup solid vegetable shortening

2 eggs

1/4 cup fresh lemon juice