Winter visitor

My grandmother sat peacefully in her chair. It was the moment in the day when the laundry was in the washer, the dishes were all put away, the kids were at school and my grandfather was at work. It was the perfect time to take just a few to rest her eyes. In the quiet of the room you could almost hear the snow falling outside and the ticking of the clock in the next room.

She leaned back in the brown recliner, letting her breathing get deep and her thoughts wonder. In her mind she thought about the stereo behind her, where recordings had been made of my mom and aunt singing, recordings that had the voice of a stranger on them. It was a woman who seemed oblivious to the singing girls. A voice no one present had heard. This thought was not enough to bother her, her whole life had been filled with these kind of happenings.

She thought of the dining room in her last house where voices were so often heard it fell into disuse. She remembered how my grandfather got home late in those days, after an afternoon shift, and he would come into the house by the kitchen, to prepare his snack and then walk around the outside of the house to get to the living room. He would rather the inconvenience than risk hearing the invisible visitors chatting. She smiled at the thought of him balancing his plate while fiddling for his keys.

She thought of the walking man upstairs, who paced from one end of the upstairs to the other. You could here him stop at the top of the steep stairs before turning and walking through the bedroom to the window n the opposite side of the house. He wore hard bottomed shoes, which would fall silent as soon as you touched the stairs leading up. She had heard him earlier, but for now he let her rest.

Bang, bang bang. My grandmother lifted her head, shaking the spirits from her thoughts and came to the realization someone was at the door. Perhaps, she had dreamed it, she didn't want to stir too much if it was just the mailman dropping off a package or someone. She tuned her ears to the little mud room where the door opened into the house.

She could hear the creaking of the screen held open. One foot was causing the metal at the bottom to pop as the wind caused it to gain and loose pressure. She could her the rattling of the door knob. There was someone there, someone close enough to open the door after one knock.

"Anybody home?" the voice came from out of sight. It sounded vaguely familiar, but my grandmother couldn't quite place it. "Be right there."

She released the foot stool of the recliner and hoisted herself to her feet. She walked around the corner, so she could see through the dining room and the kitchen into the mud room and who ever it was had stepped back. The door was closed again. She got to the door quickly, noticing only casually that it had been pulled tight.

When she turned the knob and pulled hard, because the door often would stick in the cold, she was surprised to discover her guest had disappeared. Odd. Perhaps they had walked around to the back door, or moved on. The heat of the house steamed up the window on the screen door, so she opened it to have a look around. The door was heavy, pushing through the couple inches of snow that had collected outside. It was then she examined the snow. No foot prints. From her door to the road lay a crisp, smooth, blanket, of fresh snow.