Songbird
A (Potential) Novel by Eileen Kelly
Rosanna Fisher's House
Just a little ways outside of town is a quiet street where the houses are spread a bit farther apart from one another, with large backyards and beautiful gardens full of wildflowers and vegetables. You’re taking a walk one day when one particular craftsman-style cottage catches your eye. It’s painted a seaglass shade of blue, with white shutters and a large front porch made from weathered wooden planks. It even has a porch swing, and the whole arrangement makes the house look less like a place where people actually live and more like a dollhouse.
If you were to go inside the house, you would step into a small living room with a floral sofa and a brick fireplace. Through an archway at the back of the room is a kitchen with a blue stove and a red refrigerator, and in the center of the room is a worn wooden table with a green vase of flowers in the center of it. Under one of the cabinets hangs a fruit basket filled with peaches, apples, and bananas, and open shelves above the countertop hold cups and bowls and plates of all colors--no two alike.
Upstairs you would find three small bedrooms, one of which has been converted into a makeshift art studio. An easel holding a half-finished brightly-colored abstract painting sits in the center of
the room, and boxes of paints are stacked against the wall along with canvases. Next to this room you would peek through an open doorway and see a master bedroom with a colorful quilt thrown across the bed and long curtains flowing in a breeze from two open windows. The final room leads you to a smaller bedroom, with a twin-sized bed and a writing desk with notebooks and journals stacked on shelves above it. On the floor is a large rag rug, colorful fabrics winding round and round in a kaleidoscope-like pattern. The entire effect of being in this house is warm and inviting, like visiting your grandmother, and you immediately feel at home.