Waiting.

It’s the same routine every night: check rooms, lock windows, lock doors.  Then she’ll prop her favourite chair against her bedroom door handle and try to sleep.  The familiar safe sounds of the old, creaky house become something else when it gets dark. They become the sounds of his footsteps, of his hatred, of his determination… because he swore that one day, he’d come back.

She still sleeps in the bed she used to share with him, only now she shares the bed with a kitchen knife or some sharp scissors, carefully tucked under her pillow. Easy to reach in case he comes back. She knows she needs to be careful; one moment’s hesitation, one sign of weakness and her knife becomes his knife.

She’ll tell herself that it’s been five years. Five years and nothing.

But she knows he’ll come back.

And she’ll be ready.