Quick/Flash

                Adelaide didn’t feel like eating, so she stayed moving around the small space. Picking up an object or two and then putting them back. She could walk thirty steps between the far wall with the fireplace and the kitchen table. It was another twenty steps from the back wall by the ladder to the loft to the front door.

                “Tomorrow starts the real work.” Wreke tried to speak around mouthfuls of food, and Adelaide just turned to observe out of the corner of her eye. “I need that tobacco crop to be real nice and big for the harvest. So I needs you, little missy, to make the plot bigger and to sow the seeds tomorrow.” Food dribbled down his scraggly chin as she watched.

                “Sounds like a fine idea, Mr. Wreke.” She smoothed her dress down in the front and stared at the floorboards beneath her small shoes. “Well then I suppose I should be heading to my bed.” She turned towards Wreke and her brother, “James I trust you will clean up after supper and then come up to the loft.” James looked at her, and then to Wreke, and then his eyes slid knowingly to his sisters hands.

                To anyone else looking at the two they might have been just standing there and taking every word at face value, but James and Adelaide had long since come up with a shorthanded sign language for use when they wanted to say something without being disturbed. His eyes grew wide as his sister signed the words for ‘Lock the door when you come up’.

 Adelaide climbed the ladder to the loft and settled down on the stiff mattress. Closing her eyes she tried her best to fall asleep. But sleep evaded her, at least until she felt the weight and familiar smell of her brother lying next to her. The last thing she remembered was his reassuring bulk lying next to her.