<div class="pull-right"><center><img src="https://steemitimages.com/DQmQmE6YqkkdpaN25rXadm1BgzMQinnECch4SAnhap8q38A/image.png" /><br/><em></em></center></div>

## <center>Fumigate</center>
<br>Claire looked at her husband, and as in their youth, despite the slack of age, her cheeks still flashed.

Age had taken its toll on him. Alzheimer' had made sure to rid him of memory. To empty his beautiful mind of their 40 years journey, but she knew that in his heart, she was still the pumpkin of his youth. 

Today was the 40th anniversary of their marriage. Yet it seemed like only yesterday when he first knocked on her door. 

Here sited at the back yard, she looked at him, looked back on the years long gone, and everything beautiful about the man she might have never met. 

Now her memory relayed, she traveled away, and back.
***

She had just moved to the quite South End neighborhood. Sooner her house was all set. The neighbors had been well too kind to help, and left.

fatigued, she took to bed early, snugged inside the woolen blanket, and was dozing off, when in the dead silence, intruded a cracking scratching sound, isolated then insistent…up in the ceiling. Claire’s skin crawled. 

She jumped off bed, and switched on the lights. The scratching stopped. She turned off the lights…The scratching returned

On, and it went away.. 

It must have been a while when she heard a knock on her door. It was her immediate neighbor, Jack.

“Is all well?” He asked. He had noticed the lights still on till this late.

“Something or someone in the ceiling….scratching, and …”

Now he laughed. “I should have warned you! Rats,

“You might need to fumigate the house!” He said, as though glad. And he would help her. 

Now she would need a day or two out. 

But where would she reside? 

“I have a spare room in my house,” he offered!

And in that simple act, was planted a seed now blossomed 40 years.
***

And what a husband! Claire now smiled, as she packed away the memory, holding Jack’s hand,

“I am glad for the rats!” she said,  “And i know in your heart is still stored that day, my fumigator!”