Delilah’s
DILEMMAS HOMESTEAD
MEDICAL
An unfamiliar sound woke Delilah. The television was still on. She laid in her bed a moment, attempting to work out what the noise could have been. It wasn’t the air conditioner. But it was definitely inside the house. Or was it? It could have just been something on the television. She rolled over and looked at the clock on the side table. It was 11:43. There was the sound again. It didn’t sound close; downstairs perhaps. It wasn’t exactly footsteps. More like a shuffling vibration of sorts. It certainly didn’t sound like any noise Pandora had ever made. So, she ruled out the cantankerous, old goat, who had a habit of gaining entrance to the house by stealth means. Why hadn’t she taken a gun to bed with her? She sat up in bed. She turned the television off and the lamp on, and she listened. “Joel?” she said weakly. “Is that you?” “No,” came the reply. Delilah sprang from bed. He heart was pounding fiercely, and she could scarcely find her breath. She knew that voice, that female voice. What to do? Play dumb? Be confrontational? She reached for her cell phone on the side table. It wasn’t there. It was charging in the kitchen. “Patty?” Delilah called out. She picked up the receiver of the land line and held it to her ear. The phone downstairs had been taken off the hook. This did not bode well. “Yes, Dear,” Patty replied in her sweetest, old lady voice, from the bottom of the stairs. “Why don’t you come downstairs? We need to have a little talk.” Said the spider to the fly. Delilah’s mind was reeling. She had to find some way to contact Joel. She gasped. Had 32 THE CORRIDOR MAGAZINE / JUNE 2020
by
DIANE BROWN
Patty been to the trailer, and “taken care of” Joel like she was about to “take care of” Delilah? Delilah shrugged on her robe and slid her feet into her house shoes. By the time she made it from her bedroom to the top of the stairs, a lamp in the living room had come to light. Delilah slowly made her way down the stairs, and found Patty sitting in the wing back chair in the living room. She had been right to assume Patty had a weapon. But she would never have guessed that the weapon was the 9MM Ruger from her own gun cabinet. “I would ask how you got in my house and then in my gun cabinet,” Delilah growled. “But I forget you have a history on this ranch that supersedes my tenancy. “Unfortunately,” she added, under her breath. Patty laughed heartily. “True,” she said. “My close friendship with your aunt has proven beneficial beyond my wildest dreams. She gave me a key to the house ages ago, to look in on things when she was in Georgia visiting you. She never asked for i t bac k , and I nev er of f er ed t o r et ur n it.” Delilah stood in the doorway to the living room, arms crossed in front of her. “You might as well make yourself comfortable, Dear,” Patty said. “This may take a bit.”
