[15: They had a particular smell]

She hung the sheets on the line, shaking each one out with a wet slap, then deftly tossing it over the low, slumping lines running from the porch to the post in the center of the yard.

They had a particular smell, and she couldn’t place exactly what made it. Hints of laundry detergent, and the slight tang of the iron in the water, but there was something else and she couldn’t figure out what it was. At this point, it just was part of the smell of the whole house.

She noticed the long grass around the post, left alone like the grass at the edges of the yard, carelessly mown, just enough to appease the nosiest of the neighbors, but not expending any real effort.

Slap. Toss. 

Three sets of sheets, and tossing the last of them over the line, they just brushed the grass.

“Oh, well.” she thought, and realized just how the yard always stayed that barely acceptable ragged.

She straightened and dragged the faded yellow plastic basket back toward the porch. 

She layed it out on the picnic table that doubled as a storage heap for recycling that never seemed to make it to the bin, bags of cans that someone might take into town some day, bits of metal and wire that might be useful if they weren’t in a tangled heap. She sighed and stepped back into the house.

It was the usual mess. The corners were dirty, but nobody ever did more than they had to, so it stayed, smelling of stale grease and soot and probably something rotting, but not enough to get noticed on its own.

She set to work clearing the sink of dishes. There was nowhere to set them, and again the temptation was to just leave them, but she couldn’t stand it. She cringed as she set them on the floor, emptying the sink enough to run water.

No soap. Figures. Another run to the store.

Oh, well. Better than waiting for Jeffrey to get home from work in this mess.

She slipped out the front door, the screen not quite shutting as the warped frame had dropped enough to keep it from touching. She tugged on it, and gave up and went to her car.

It was a rental, and the clean silver was so out of place in this yard. In this town, even. The cracking pavement was bordered with dented mailboxes, rusting pickup trucks, and more than one car with a cinder block where one of the wheels should have been, a repair project started and never finished, by the looks of it.

As she closed the door, she noticed the silence.