Arabella Lucas

It was a mildly warm summer day in June, and Arabella Lucas was walking home at quarter past seven down Filmore Street, between Peach Walk and Fifth Avenue. She had walked a mile and half from the town library, where she worked from eight in the morning to five-thirty in the afternoon. Arabella usually drove her way to and from work in her shiny blue Camry, but the car was still being patched up at the repair shop. She’d driven into a pot hole earlier that week, a Wednesday. She seemed to recall that Wednesdays weren’t here particularly favorite days of the week. For one, it was garbage disposal day in her neighborhood, which meant hauling out the trash early in the morning before she went to work.

Having just done her weekly grocery shopping, Mrs. Lucas was turning the corner at Filmore with armfuls of brown grocery bags. Just as she was stepping around the corner, she collided into a young man who looked about the age of her son. Naturally, fruit and vegetables began tumbling out of Mrs. Lucas’s grocery bags. The young man hastily picked himself back up from the ground and ran, calling over his shoulder, “Sorry about that!” Within moments, he had dashed across the road with honking vehicles and disappeared at another corner. Irritated, Mrs. Lucas went to pick up her vegetables. Muttering to self sourly, she put the groceries back in her bags and headed off toward home.

Although Mr. Lucas taught at the Plumeburgh Township High School, and normally was home at around five or six in the evening, today he was on his way to pick up their son at the airport. Arabella was just starting to cook some noodles.