Tuesday's Tales ~ Abrupt

 

Welcome to Tuesday's Tales  

 

Once again, many thanks to all those who drop by each week. I also appreciate, and often act upon comments and suggestions left.  Many thanks.

 

My story continues on from last week. Norma has decided to start on the broken mirror she found up in the attic and had just removed the backing panels. ~~I am also using NaNo to continue with this story. :-) 

 

“You mentioned something about a mirror?” Norma set the panels on the ground and crossed to the bedside. “I had no idea you had so many in the house.”

“You always had good instincts.”

It was true, whenever something was lost people came to her to ask if she knew where they should look, and more often than not she steered them in the right direction. Something else Norma had taken for granted until she started school. Quickly she’d learned to shrug her shoulders when her friends asked for help to find things.

Now she fluffed up the pillows, added a couple more and helped her grandmother to sit up and covered her shoulders with a shawl before sitting on the edge of the bed.

“Why do you say that?”  Norma found her grandmother’s searching stare a bit disconcerting. “Is that the mirror you were talking about?”

“It is, although when it was put upstairs it was not broken.”  Her grandmother’s eyes darkened when she studied the bits and pieces on the floor. “What did you find?”

“Nothing yet. I only just dismantled the frame and took the back panel away. I thought it was one piece of plywood, but it’s not, is it?”

 “No. Your grandfather replaced the original backing with two thinner pieces.”

“Why?”

“Never mind the backing pieces.” The abrupt demand had Norma swivelling round to look from the broken frame to her grandmother.

“Okay,” she said, and dropped to her knees and reached out for the remnants of the frame. A tinkling sound, as she rose, halted Norma’s intention to lay the pieces of frame on the bedcover.

In the dwindling sun rays she saw the glitter of a small silver object and reached out for it. A key? Picking it up, she turned it over in her palm before staring at her grandmother.

“Give it to me.” Her grandmother reached out her hand, her eyes no longer gentle, her lips not thinned in pain, Norma acknowledged, but in fury. “Your grandfather was a good man, but rarely changed his mind once he’d come to a decision, and—” she snatched the key out of Norma’s hand. “— in this case he was plain wrong.”

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