Ellie was showing that she had definite business sense with her running of the bed and breakfast and it had developed into a nice little earner! It was all going wonderfully well. So when she came running into the fields one day when she should have been serving lunch to the guests, Richard was as worried as his daughter looked.
A tearful Ellie explained that she had gone into one of the guestrooms to call Mrs.McGinnity for lunch and had found the poor lady dead in bed! Richard rushed back to the farmhouse and called for an ambulance.
The ambulance arrived along with some police officers that had to come along and make sure that there had been nothing suspicious in the death of the elderly lady. The ambulance crew and the police officers were all wearing masks and carrying some kind of air freshener spray with them. Ellie eyed them anxiously from her seat at the kitchen table and she could barely drink her cup of tea she was shaking so much from nerves.
When she overheard that the lady had died because of a virus that was striking down old people Ellie was more than nervous. She was terrified and she rushed out to check on Grandad Moses. But when she got to the back porch she found him crumpled in a heap on the floor. He had fallen out of the rocking chair and was lying dead in a pool of green bile.
Alice was leaning over him, tears streaming down her face. Neither of the sisters could believe that Grandad Moses was finally gone. They all thought that he would have lived forever! The ambulane crew confirmed that Grandad Moses had also been struck down with the virus.
His father’s death combined with the shock of the death of Mrs.McGinnity sent Richard into a depression and he took to his room. All the death around him brought back too many memories of the night his beloved Gertie had passed away in his arms.
Alice and Ellie tried their best to keep the rest of the bed and breakfast guests from panicking but as soon as they witnessed the masked men in the farmhouse they went zooming off in their cars back to the city.
One of the farmhands had heard of the virus and told the girls to disinfect the whole farmhouse – he had heard rumours that it wasn’t just old people that were dying. He hoped that they would understand that he and the rest of the farm gang would need to make a move themselves and get back to their families.
Alice and Ellie had no choice but to wave goodbye to all the men who had worked on the farm for so long and they clung to each other, scared of what was happening in their world.
It wasn’t long before they noticed that Richard wasn’t just depressed – he was sick. They nursed him and tried to keep the hysteria from creeping up on them. Alice was stronger than Ellie physically and mentally and took on the burden of caring for their father as his illness progressed.
Ellie tried to keep things going on the farm and she spent her time in the fields speaking to her mother in her head. When she looked up one afternoon and saw a vision of her mother she knew that she had to run back to the farmhouse as fast as she could. She got there just in time to say goodbye to her father who held his daughters’ hands in his and cried silent tears as he closed his eyes for the last time.
Alice and Ellie buried their father next to Gertie and Grandad Moses in the family plot in the woods. They held each other tight and made a solemn promise that they would never be apart – nobody and nothing could ever separate them. They were sisters. They were friends. They were all that was left.