She sits upon the hard steps. Her fingers brushing back curls that just touch her shoulders. She looks down upon the dress. Brown its fabric linen and dropping to tea length. There are black velvet cuffs and a sweetheart neckline. The steps are in front of a two-story red brick building with a diamond shaped window in the door glinting red and gold, sun from some other place playing through it. The building appears to be part of a series of small apartments. On her left and right are similar stoops. The one on the left is empty and dark but the one on the right is alight with color. Several plastic pinwheels blow this way and that. An old woman in a worn green dress sits on an old wooden chair. Smiling and toothless. Nodding to an unseen visitor. Lyllian hears herself call out.

“Fine morning it is Mrs. Mgillicutty.”

“Yes yes Mrs. Finnegan, a fine morning” the old woman nods and smiles. She can feel the woman’s eyes upon her long past when they should have turned away. Their milkiness somehow piercing. A thought comes unbidden to her as she sips at her tea which has gone cool in her hands.  The old woman, her voice and her manner. The rich breads she sent over when she and Joe moved in. Her patched shawl and the mutterings. She reminds her of home.

A roar and a crack. Lyllian’s head snaps up. Had she been asleep at her desk? Her long brown curls hang over her arms and she clutches an imaginary sweater. The sound of approaching voices, loud then they fade as a chattering pair of women from the Accounting department walk by her cubicle. Lyllian leans back in her chair. Feeling unsteady. Had she been dreaming? She smoothes down her blue tee shirt and wriggles her toes in her black sneakers. It had felt so real. Like she was home. Sitting on her porch. Welcoming the sunrise.  Only she was sitting in her cubicle the air conditioning giving her goosebumps. 

Next Chapter: Lucy, December 1936, New York