Feathers

Epilogue

The sun shone through the kitchen window, highlighting dust motes that hung in the air over the laminex counter tops.

Spencer took a sip from his mug of lemon tea. Michael idly stirred his, lost in a day dream, thinking about how little he was looking forward to work the next day. At least they'd let him and Spencer keep their jobs after they disappeared for a week.

Kobie stood up from the small wooden dining room table to take her empty cup to the sink.

"Are you finished with that?" she asked Gretchen.

"Yeah thanks," Gretchen handed her mug up to Kobie who walked into the kitchen to wash them up. She sneezed, the dust setting of her hayfever.

"Guys who's turn is it to vacuum? I know it's not mine."

Michael and Spencer both looked at Gretchen.

"What? What are you looking at?"

"It's definitely your turn Gretch," Michael said tentatively.

"Look. I'm a Queen okay. And Queen's don't need to vacuum."

"They do when they live in my house," Kobie said, grinning at her friend.

Gretchen let out a dramatic sigh, "Fine, I'll vacuum."

Spencer, who was slowly learning how to speak his mind more openly with Gretchen piped up, "In fairness, I believe that's what Enid would have wanted, for us to look after her house."

Gretchen rolled her eyes but didn't say anything.

"Thanks Spencer," Kobie said, walking back over to the dining room table with a damp cloth. She wiped down the table first, and then more gently, and with extra care, wiped down the picture frame sitting in the middle of it.

It was one of those photo collage frames which housed a collection of photos arranged nicely with coloured cardboard backing. In one photo a younger Enid stood in climbing gear smiling from the summit of a bushwalking trail. In another, Kobie's mother lay sunbaking on a Newcastle beach as a teenager.

The final photo was taken in the same house that they were sitting in, the small cottage left to Kobie in Enid's will and now shared with her three best friends.

In this photo, three figures sat on an old threadbare couch in the lounge room next to the archway. On the left was Kobie's father. Next to him a young pudgy faced Kobie beamed up at the camera. It was the third figure that Kobie lingered over the longest. An empty space to any guests who visited them, but forever visible to Kobie, still watching over her from behind the glass of the photo frame - the dark, hooded spectre of the Crow.