When We Let Go

Coffee was critical. And I peered into the old tea tin someone had given me once (it had been filled with tea, but I’d fixed that right away), only to find I was out. Because of course, I was.

And what the hell was that tapping noise outside? It was half-past barely the buttcrack of dawn. And I had no coffee, an increasingly bad attitude, and a growing irritation for woodpeckers. If that was a woodpecker.

Was he pecking on something metal? Stupid bird. I squinted out the cheap broken blinds over the dinette but didn’t see anything except trees. Because that was one thing I wasn’t short on up here in the place to which I’d been relegated. There were plenty of trees.

Tap, tap, tap.

And persistent birds. I hated birds.

But I didn’t think that was a bird. The sound was annoying and abrasive, most likely human in origin, I thought. And only one person I knew was capable of inspiring the level of irritation I was feeling. I shuffled across the thin bubbled linoleum floor to the window that looked out the front. A glance out the window confirmed my worst fear. Jack.

An ungodly rage filled me at the sight of him, and perhaps I should have taken a breath and given more thought to the situation before acting. But that had never really been my style.