The rain started so suddenly Claire barely had time to get in from the porch and close the doors behind her before the downpour delivered a deafening drum solo on the roof. Claire’s grandfather was rushing through the house, as he used to do under these circumstances, closing up doors, windows and shutters and making sure everybody was inside, safe from the storm. The young woman smiled, tracking his movements through the house by the noises he made - feet shuffling on the floor, sounds of doors opening and slamming behind him, footsteps up and down the stairs, the screech of the attic ladder being dragged on the floor in the hallway upstairs. 

Claire’s grandfather was a force of nature, he blew rather than walked through the doors, in a motion more akin to a rushing wind than to a living breathing person. He never closed a cabinet or a drawer, and when he moved through a room small napkins and pieces of paper which happened to be left on the table got caught in his draft like leaves in the wind, stopped from trailing behind him only by the doors which invariably slammed shut after he walked through them. Claire didn’t even realize how much she had missed those noises. She spent a few minutes listening to this symphonic racket like she would to a fine piece of music, failing to notice she was standing in the alcove between the mirrors again.

💡
Read the rest of the chapter at frosenfeld.fika.bar