Chapter 6 - The Broken Manor
The walk through the supermarket felt like a slow march to an execution.
Beatrice mechanically pushed the cart through the checkout line, placing the twelve clearance turkeys on the conveyor belt alongside Martha’s soup ingredients.
The cashier, a young girl no older than nineteen with a name tag that read Chloe, scanned the items in absolute silence.
“Total is sixty-four dollars and twelve cents,” Chloe announced clearly.
Arthur stepped up, placed the required bills on the black counter, and added a generous tip directly to the store’s holiday charity bin.
“Pack them into brown paper bags,” Arthur directed.
“No plastic bags today. Beatrice needs to carry them.”
“I have two hands!” Beatrice cried out, near tears.
“How am I supposed to carry five heavy bags?”
“You make two trips,” Arthur answered coldly.
They loaded the bags into the trunk of Arthur’s black sedan, leaving Beatrice’s sleek sports car parked outside in the supermarket lot.
Arthur climbed into the driver’s seat, while Martha sat in the passenger side, guiding him through the northern outskirts of town.
Beatrice was forced to sit in the cramped back seat between cold paper grocery bags that smelled of raw poultry and damp brown paper.
They drove away from the manicured lawns and gated estates of Oakridge Hills, entering the older mill district on the east side.
Here, the streetlights flickered with broken bulbs, and the houses stood shoulder-to-shoulder with peeling paint and sagging porches.
Arthur pulled the car up to a small, two-story clapboard house with a rusted chain-link fence.
The front porch roof sagged dangerously to the left, propped up by a weathered wooden post wrapped in duct tape.
“We’re here,” Martha said softly, unclipping her seatbelt with a sigh of relief.
Beatrice stared through the tinted window at the tiny, crumbling structure.
“She lives in this shack?” Beatrice muttered under her breath.
Arthur turned around in his seat, his gaze piercing through the dim car interior.
“Grab the bags, Beatrice. All of them.”
Beatrice stepped out into the freezing November air, shivering as the damp wind cut straight through her torn coat.
She picked up two heavy grocery bags, the rough paper biting into her soft palms.
As she walked up the creaky front steps, the front door swung open.
A small boy wrapped in an oversized adult flannel shirt stepped out onto the porch, clutching a worn teddy bear missing one ear.
His face was flushed red with fever, his eyes glazed and sunken from illness.
May you like
“Grandma?” the little boy whispered hoarsely, shivering violently in the doorway.
“Did you get the soup?”
