Just a quick note: The character was originally named Alice. If you notice any "Alice"'s in there, let me know!

Now, ten in the morning, Adie sat in the empty living room, perched atop one of the cold leather sofas her mother had bought for the living room, eating breakfast. Walking downstairs, Adie had found her house deserted. Ruby was gone. Where she had gone, Adie had no idea or real interest. She had walked through the kitchen, opening all the cabinets and the refrigerator, taking stock of all the available food there was. Not surprisingly, there was not much to be found. There were no eggs for Adie to make an omelet. No flour for pancakes. There was no bread to make French toast. Alice finally settled on a bowl of stale, dry Peanut Butter Crunch without milk because the fridge was void of that necessity as well. Sipping her water and wiggling her toes, stuffing handfuls of sugary cereal into her mouth, Adie relaxed as she watched Saturday morning cartoons.

After two hours of television, having worked her way from Garfield to the afternoon news, Adie walked back into the kitchen, placing her empty bowl in the sink then looked around the room as if asking what she was supposed to do next. Sitting on the kitchen counter was her copy of On the Road. Alice picked it up, placed herself on one of the wooden chairs at the kitchen table, opened to her spot in the book and read the first sentence of the chapter she had left off on. Her sight quickly began to shift out of focus. Bored already, after less than five seconds of reading, Adie closed the book and left the kitchen to wander about the house.

She meandered from the kitchen back to the living room wondering if there was something in there that would be an adequate source of distraction. Adie sighed as she took inventory of the room.

“Investigation into the deaths of eight American soldiers in Iraq has led to no clues as to whether…” was the reply Adie received from the primped reporter reaching out to her from TV land.

Not switching off the television, Adie moved down the hallway and into the bathroom. There she began opening cabinets and looking at everything that was kept there. Under the sink were the cleaning products: Clorox, Windex, the little scrubbing bubbles from the commercials. Wasn’t there some rule against keeping chemicals under the sink? What if a child was in the house and got in there, decided to taste all the toxic products and died? Maybe, Adie thought, she should make an example of herself, showing her mother the error of her ways by chugging down some Clorox. Her mother would come home and find her lying on the tiles of the bathroom floor, bubbly foam overflowing from her open mouth and dripping down the corners of her lips over her lifeless cheeks. No. It was not worth the effort. The point would be lost on Ruby anyway.

In the next cabinet over, Adie found all the leftover hair products from years gone past. There were opened, half used bottles of shampoo ranging from Herbal Essences to Pert Plus. Old bottles of hair gel and anti-frizz cream were stashed in the corners. There was even a can of Aqua Net from days gone by when big hair was in and the O-Zone was out. Also hidden within was a box of dusty foam hair rollers. Out of boredom, Adie pulled these out and stuck a few in her hair. Maybe now I will be beautiful, she teased herself. Other than the usual articles of dental hygiene kept above the sink, and a mysterious can of shaving cream that had expired three years previously (which Adie suspected had been there since her father left), there was nothing else within the bathroom of any interest.

Moving on, she thought. In her mother’s room, Adie found the same disorder as always. The large plush bed was unmade, the one picture in the room, a black and white café scene photographed in a country Ruby had never visited, was hanging crooked above the bed. There were pairs of jeans and sweaters, panties and socks strewn about the room, hanging from open drawers. Throwing herself onto the bed, Adie curled up and inhaled the scent of her mother. The aroma of sugar cookies and baby powder mixed with the scent of make-up remover filled her nostrils and sent her into a state of nostalgia. Suddenly, an ancient memory flashed in Adie’s mind.

She had been six, or maybe eight. Having come down with the flu, Adie had been forced to spend the day away from school. Her mother having just begun a new job as a secretary at the local middle school, Adie was forced to spend the day at her grandmother’s house. Unlike Ruby who pampered Adie with warm hot cocoa in front of cartoons all day during an illness, Grandma Beatrice shut Adie away in the guest bedroom of her spooky, ancient house that smelled of mothballs and decay. The lights had been switched off and Adie was forbidden to make a peep. Sick children were to sleep. Being forced to lay still and quiet all day, treated only to a cocktail of whatever random assortment of (most likely expired) medication from over the sink, by the time the afternoon had rolled around Adie had progressed from feeling a little ill to a state of absolute misery. She wept bitter tears, angry at her grandmother who did not understand how to treat a sick child, angry at her mother for leaving her in the clutches of this primitive cow, and angry at “ant-flew-in-the” for making her too ill to attend school which was surly better than this. Plotting her escape, making up a plan to slip from Grandma’s house to the street where she would attempt to find her way home, Adie had spent the last hour of her captivity in desperation. About to carry out her ingenious design, Adie was startled by the bedroom door opening. Afraid that it was her grandmother, returned to administer another spoonful of caster oil or another pill too large for little Adie’s throat to swallow, she had immediately frozen in place, squeezing her eyes tight, pretending to be asleep. Instead of being woken from her pseudo-sleep by the cold, wrinkled hands she was expecting, however, Adie found herself being scooped up in a pair of familiar arms and placed against the shoulder of her mother’s sleek business suit, her cheek resting on a cozy shoulder pad. Then, mingled with the scent of winter, Adie had smelled the same aroma of sugar cookies and baby powder which she smelled now on her mother’s belongings.

Lying in her mother’s bed, Adie relived the feeling of overwhelming relief and calm as she was held in her mother’s embrace so many years ago. When did that feeling of infinite love and protection which Adie was imbued with in the presence of her mother disappear? When had Ruby stopped being her guardian, her savior, the greatest source of love and admiration which Adie had in her life? Stretching out on the large bed, Adie felt the extreme loneliness of unshared space. The over-soft, oversized, comforter engulfed her body, drawing all of her attention to the fact that she was alone in this bed made for two. She wondered how her mother could sleep here all alone.