Mrs. Weatherly

Trying to get up from the rocking chair, Mrs. Inid Weatherly wished she were younger.

Not 20 but not 82.

Her barely middle aged mind shouldn't be trapped in this old body.

Her joints ached, her feet swelled, her fingers weren't nimble.  What she lacked in agility she made up in grey matter.

She wore the customary knit pants with acrylic sweaters not because she wanted to but because it was expected of her. The one time her daughter saw her in jeans her face turned as red as a tomato.  Mrs. Weatherly wanted to laugh but didn't.  Instead she threw out the jeans and adopted her daily uniform.  She loved her daughter very much.

Her daughter checked on her once a week, always on a different day and always without warning. 

Her son rarely came to her.  But when he did it was splendid. 

She had her daughter at 19, too young, and her son at 42, too old.

Maybe that was the reason she lacked conformity.  She had never bothered with it before and she wasn't about to do it now.

Her mind was strong.  It kept her going.  Her body would never survive swimming the English Channel but her mind did.  In the books she read.  With them she could go anywhere, be anything, or anyone.

Her current reading list included every Agatha Christie book her library had.

The more books she read the more she paid attention to her world.

That's when she first discovered her neighbor, Jack.

In the morning while the rest of the neigborhood hustled to work and getting the kids to school, Jack's house was silent.  He didn't seem to have a job that he needed to get to or a family that visited.

A trust fund?  Maybe but people didn't seem to have those anymore.

So Mrs. Weatherly watched. 

Every day she would nap in her rocking chair making sure she was up at 11pm when Jack's day began.

Two or three times a month Jack would leave and come back accompanied by a lovely young lady.  The only thing these ladies seemed to have in common youth and expensive cars.

Mrs. Weatherly watched as Jack pulled up to the house with these women.  Walking to his front door laughing.  He always made them laugh.

This routine would have gotten very boring quickly for someone as imaginative as Mrs Weatherly had she not realized after the 3rd time that she never saw the women leave.

Jack would drive the cars away after several hours of entertaining and returned in a taxi.

Mrs. Weatherly cursed her failing eyesight.  She needed to see better at night. 

Binoculars, that was the answer.

She would tell her daughter they were for watching the birds.  A perfectly respectable thing for an 82 year old woman to do.