Julianne’s Bio:

Julianne Pierce is a graduate of the Film and Television Studies program at California State University in Los Angeles. She lives in New York City and currently works in Television Research. An avid reader and a lover of great stories, this is her first flash fiction contest.

Reflection

By Julianne Pierce

 

“It’s probably nothing,” she thought. It was nearly 4:00am, and she’d been sitting there, staring out the window for hours. Normally she had a view of the woods from the dressing table, but with the lamp shining in the window, all she could see was her own reflection.

She considered turning the light out, but really there was no point. The nearest neighbors were two miles down the road, now that they were living in the middle of nowhere.

The house had been her husband’s childhood home and after his mother passed last summer, he suggested the move. She’d done it for him, giving up her life in the city, leaving behind the museums, the theater, the galleries that had consumed most of her free time. Now she had to drive ten miles to buy milk.

She ran her fingers along the side of the dressing table, his mother’s dressing table. It was painted a hideous pink and the wood was beginning to chip. She picked at it with her fingernail. There was a small perfume stain in the corner, Chanel or maybe L’Heure Bleue.

The sudden clang of the furnace made her jump, but she was grateful for the warmth it would soon provide. Goosebumps prickled her skin and the tip of her nose was cool to the touch.

Her husband was on yet another business trip, to Tulsa or Tucson, she couldn’t remember which, and she was alone in the house again. He’d suggested getting more involved socially, but she had no interest in needlepoint or making jam.

The town itself wasn’t too bad. There was a post office, a gas station, and of course the country doctor she visited when she first suspected something.  

She’d been surprised at his advanced age, the doctors in the city were young or at least relatively so. This doctor was nearly eighty and told stories of town children born at home, in beds or on kitchen floors.

He hadn’t been unkind, but she caught something in his tone that implied soothing an urban neurotic. He was going to send her home, but she had insisted on the biopsy. When the results came back, he assured her that women in their forties often showed false positives.

Her hand brushed a piece of lint from the table. The intense silence of the night was distracting. She missed the comforting sounds of the pre-dawn traffic.

She would take the ferry to Burlington on Tuesday for a second opinion. She squinted into the window, trying to read her own face. “It’s probably nothing,” she thought.

***