She had lived in the old house for as long as she could remember. Her parents had lived in it even longer, and so had their parents and so on and so forth. If she did the math right it was her great x7 grandfather who had built the house for his wife. She had died before it was finished, but he still built it exactly as she had wanted it.
Over the years, family members had added on and changed, but the one thing that remained unchanged was the foyer. The front door had been repainted too many times to count, one over the other, and each morning more multicolored paint chips fell onto the porch. The carpet had been torn up, tacked form, replaced with wood, back to carpet. The rugs needed to be replaced.
The one thing that didn’t change in the foyer was the furniture. A small table by the front door where the lot of the family placed their things when they came home. She still had the scar from where she had smacked into the corner of the table when she was 2 and a 1/2. She still placed her keys there when she came home.
A fancy China cabinet stood across from the front door, taking up space and showing off their fancy China from the civil war era. The China had long been a topic of discussion, from when it was new, to the last 50 years or so when they toppled over and no one could figure out how to open the cabinet and fix them without shattering them. They had simply stayed that way for years.
By far, her favorite was the ornate mirror that hung on the wall near the stairs. It had been there since the very beginning. All her ancestors had used it to catch their last looks before leaving the house.
She used it then to catch her last look before heading out on a date. He would be there any minute.
“You gonna go out looking like a painted up whore?” The reflection of her great great great grandfather’s ghost appeared in the mirror behind her.
In the next instant, her great great great grandmother appeared next to him in the reflection. “Give her a break, Clem,” she said with a reassuring hand on his ghostly shoulder. “That’s the style these days.”
“Thank you, Grammy Charlotte,” She said as the doorbell rang. “You all be good tonight and don’t let Louis argue too much about the china. Nothing can be done yet.”
Grammy Charlotte rolled her eyes. “That man and his damn china.”
