Author's website: http://www.geocities.com/ifirstcametochicago

Disclaimer: The characters of Ray and Francesca Vecchio belong to Alliance Communications. I borrow them for a moment, with no intention of disrespect or hope of personal gain.

Author's Notes: This is for the folks at RacineStreet and RideForever, with special thanks to Jo and Laurie.

Story Notes:

Francesca stood in the doorway of a stranger's room.

Her own suitcases were stacked at the foot of the old four-poster bed. Her own ragged teddy bear sat limply on the pillow, directly below the carved wooden crucifix her Nonno Vecchio had given her for First Communion. The lilac-colored shag throw rug was centered on the hardwood floor between the door and the bed. Every piece of furniture gleamed softly in the yellow light of her bedside lamp.

It was strangely quiet in the house; there was no television, no radio, no childish voices echoing through the hallways, no racket of footseps running up and down the stairs. Ma, Maria, Tony and the kids had gone out to Scarpetta's for supper. Here at home there was only the steady drumming of rain on the roof, the rattle of window frames in the wind, and the occasional deep roll of thunder.

She sat down on the bed and breathed in the light perfume of lavender and laundry soap. The pastel flowered bedspread was smooth and straight, carefully tucked in three inches under the edge of the pillow. She knew without having to pull back the covers that the sheets would be crisp and clean, folded in tight hospital corners under the mattress. In the same way she knew, without getting down on her hands and knees to peek under the dust ruffle, that the floor beneath the bed would be free of cobwebs and dust bunnies.

On the corner of the bookcase was her purple passion plant in its pink plastic pot. The poor thing had been in sad shape when she left, only six inches tall and barely tinged with its namesake color, but today the plant was vigorous and bushy, with a healthy blush of purple velvet on deep green foliage. She brushed a fingertip across one of the soft, downy leaves, new growth that had appeared miraculously while she was away.

Beside the plant, her white leather-bound Bible sat on top of her four high school yearbooks, which were arranged in chronological order. On the shelves below, dog-eared paperbacks were lined up neatly, organized by subject: romances and fantasies on the top shelf, horror and thrillers on the middle shelf. Her magazines were on the bottom, fashion journals in one stack, entertainment and gossip magazines in the other. She fingered through the stacks, and found that, within each category, the magazines had been sorted first by title, then by date. Impulsively, she grabbed the most recent issue of "Modern Bride" and jammed it between two old issues of "People."

She moved to the pink ruffled stool that matched the vanity table, the set her father had bought for her from the Montgomery Wards catalog when she was thirteen. She pulled open her makeup drawer, then froze as a close-by bolt of lightning filled the room with a flash of blinding white light. The explosion of thunder followed almost immediately, and for several seconds all she could do was listen to the echoing rumbles and try to blink away the spots that danced in front of her eyes.

Her makeup was gone. The makeup drawer held her old diaries--seven spiral-bound notebooks covered in pink-flowered contact paper. On top of the stack of diaries was her favorite purple calligraphy pen, and tucked in behind them were two boxes of scented stationery and a stack of old Christmas cards tied with a gold ribbon.

Hesitantly, she reached out to touch the knob of the top drawer on the left. The diary and stationary should have been in there--but when she pulled it open, she found her makeup. Eight tubes of lipstick were lined in a soldier-row from left to right in the front of the drawer. Jars and bottles of liquid makeup, eyeshadow in several dozen colors, eyebrow pencils, sponges, brushes, all were arranged neatly and efficiently in the allotted space. Everything was tidy, every item perfectly arranged and perfectly clean and perfectly wrong.

Leaving the drawers standing open, she clambered across the bed to her bureau. In the top drawer her panties were folded and stacked, her bras rolled into neat bundles, everything meticulously arranged in orderly rows. The socks in the next drawer were in matched pairs, the silk stockings were laid out smooth and flat. The third drawer held her sweaters, folded as though they were on the display shelves at Marshall Field. On top was an olive green cashmere turtleneck, fresh and pristine as it had been when she had opened the box on Christmas morning five years earlier. She had never worn it; olive green was not her color, and Aunt Dolores should have known better.

The olive green turtleneck should have been on the bottom of the pile.

On top of the bureau, the little round mirror was turned too far to the right. The silver-framed photograph of her parents should have been in the back, Maria and Tony's wedding photo to the right, the triple frame of Maria's kids to the left, the red-framed snapshot of Benton Fraser should have been in the front. The snowglobe should have been--

The snowglobe shouldn't have been there at all.

Her niece Elena had been charmed by the little snow scene with its miniature log cabin and Christmas trees ever since she was a baby in her Aunt Frannie's arms. Elena's fifth birthday had marked the day that Aunt Frannie's treasured snowglobe took up residence in Elena's bedroom. And yet, here it was--back where it had resided for so many years, on the corner of Francesca's bureau. She reached across the cluster of family photographs and picked it up, giving it a gentle shake and watching the the tiny snowstorm swirl around the plastic cabin. She didn't know whether to smile or to cry. As the sparkly snowflakes settled silently on the bottom of the globe, she twisted her wrist to start the storm again.

Her hand froze. She stared at the toy for a few moments, then ran her fingers across the back of the glass dome again and again, examining it from every angle. It was smooth, unblemished, complete. . . .

Perfect.

It was perfect, and it should not have been. The magazines should have been in an unruly pile on the top shelf of the bookcase. The lilac throw rug should have been between the bed and the window. The pillows should have been lumpy. The makeup belonged on the right, the diaries on the left. And the snowglobe should have had an inch-long crack in the glass, a crack that had been there ever since she knocked it off the bookcase while executing a handspring over the bed when she was ten years old.

She whirled around, grabbed the bedspread by one corner and flung it into the air, letting it fall in a heap in the middle of the bed. Then, clutching the restored snowglobe firmly in both hands, she headed across the hall to get some answers.

The door to Ray's room was open, the light off. The only illumination came from the light in the hallway and the dim, golden glow of the streetlight outside his window. Francesca could just barely make him out, sitting silently in the deep leather chair in the far corner of his room. Another flash of lightning threw his face into sharp focus, briefly illuminating the shot glass clutched in the fingers of his right hand and the half-empty bottle of Scotch on the nightstand. His eyes were closed, but he was not asleep; his face was brittle with tension.

"Ray?"

The still form did not move.

"Ray?"

"Go away." His voice was husky, hoarse with disuse.

"Ray."

"Please, Frannie, not now. Just leave me alone."

She entered the room, tiptoed around the foot of the bed.

He gave a long sigh and opened his eyes, eyes that had aged twenty years in the three weeks since the family had left for Florida. "What do you want?"

She knelt at his feet, pulled the glass from his unresisting fingers, and set it on the nightstand. She gently turned his hand over, placed the snowglobe in his palm, then took the other hand and placed it on top. Between his hands, a miniature blizzard raged.

"Oh, Ray," she whispered. "What happened?"

End Perfect by Melanie M: melanie.m@erols.com

Author and story notes above.