Rain ran down and bubbled against the sleek curved surface, transformed it. Like sitting inside a bowfront china cabinet faced with the beaded glass from an earlier century, Cecily thought. Appropriate, since she felt as fragile as a fine porcelain cup encased in a body, wooden and stiff with age, with skin, transparent as glass, drawn taught across brittle bones.
She stood up, moved closer to the window. How had she ended up in this New York highrise, far from the mountains she called home? Her son insisted she move near family, she resisted and then acquiesced, because it made him happy. It's what a mother did.
Cecily peered out and down forty stories at the stream of people and cars. Her son said it was like sitting on top of a mountain looking down at a river in a gorge. He said she'd feel right at home. Not so, thought Cecily, though she hadn't told him that. It was like looking into yourself and watching the blood pour from a wound in your heart. She ran her hand across the glass, traced a fine flaw in its surface. Did her son know it was fractured, was in danger of shattering? She would not tell him because if she did he would feel he had to move her again and the thought made her weary.
Still... If there was a chance he'd move her back to her mountains she might say something. She felt a slight quickening inside, then whatever had stirred, curled back into itself. Deep down she knew going home belonged in the past with beaded glass.
Cecily stepped back and stared at her reflection in the flawed window and watched, no expression on her face, as the crack widened across her soul.
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