THE RINGING ISN’T a real sound, echoing in my ears. It’s the reverberating silence when the power cuts out, and we’re alone in the old house that used to be a home. Once, the high ceilings sang with children’s laughter. My laughter. Mine and Levi’s. The tall windows let in summer sunshine, and the door was open to anyone who needed shelter.
Now, that’s ancient history. Dated furniture molders under moth-eaten dustcloths. Every surface is piled high with the detritus of a lifetime and the evidence of my father’s precipitous decline in health over his final years. Flaking paint covers the walls. Water damage from a longstanding leak in the roof traces brown furrows in what used to be cheery pale yellow. The pretty facade, ravaged by time and neglect, is like looking in a mirror. Lucky for me, I have decades of practice not looking.
Still, the absence of sound burrows into my eardrums and won’t stop. I get up from the sagging mattress, redolent with disuse. We brought clean bedding, at least. The bed squeaks under my weight as I stand. The floor creaks under me. I used to have the squeaky floorboards memorized.
Bert doesn’t get up, but his hand finds my wrist, tries to pull me back down beside him. “Come back to bed, love.”
I shake him off. “Just checking something.”
I pad along the once familiar path to the kitchen. The silence is worse here. No buzzing hum from the fridge’s motor, keeping our food cool. No bustle of my mother presiding over the stove. No chatter of family gossip or rehashing of the family secrets. No more acrimonious words yelled over the dinner table. No stomping feet on the stairs or slamming doors. Nothing but the all-encompassing silence lingers here.
I didn’t think I’d miss the noise, but I do. Even the midnight clink of ice in my father’s nightcap after a late shift at the hospital, where he worked a second job as a janitor. The snap and fizz of my brother opening a fresh can of beer after Mom was asleep hasn’t graced these walls in years. And come morning, not even the steady drip of coffee into the carafe will break the silence of the dead.
The kitchen hasn’t been the heart of this house in a long time. The steady pulse that once drove the family who lived here has long since stopped. Shrouded in predawn stillness, the house feels like something long dead. I used to think Bert and I could bring it back to life, but more and more, it feels as though we’re just maggots. Parasites under the skin, giving the place a semblance of the life it once held.
This isn’t a home, and with the way the old place is falling down around us, I don’t know if it will remain much of a house for long. Bert says it’s just the grief talking. I’m not so sure. This place isn’t fit for the living when all I can see within its walls are the ghosts of its dead. My dead.
The ringing fades as I run my fingers over the filthy countertops. I don’t know how it got so run down. We have plans to start cleaning in the morning, but I can’t sleep while the house is rotting around us. I prop up my phone to light my work. The power company was supposed to turn the electric back on after we paid the bills last week, but it hasn’t happened yet. Something about a recent storm and a tree falling on the line. We’re too far from town to be a priority.
I dig under the sink for cleaning products. I can almost hear Grandma’s voice telling me to wear gloves or I’ll ruin my hands. It used to make me want to scrub them in bleach out of sheer pigheadedness. As though ruined hands might make her stop seeing a girl when she looked at me. Now it just makes me sad.
“What man wants a wife with callouses?” she’d ask, cupping my cheek in her wrinkled, work-rough palm. Even when I didn’t understand why, I hated when she said those things. Her thoughtless words burrowed into my skull and made me feel less. Made it seem like the marks of her hard work to provide and care for her family made her less. As though her worth and my worth had an intrinsic link to our value to a man.
I wish she had seen her own strength. And I wish she could have seen past all the societal assumptions of who I should grow up to be through to the real me. Those tangled truisms of hers, so often repeated, seemed like unbreakable laws. Laws my parents hoped would bind me to the life of their choosing.
They made it so much harder to embrace myself as a man. Until I shook free of them, it was all but impossible to understand my worth isn’t about what I can give to others. Their expectations used to ring in my ears, but now they’re gone, and their voices are as silent as this old dead house.
I don’t find the cleaning products where they used to be. So I have to go out to Bert’s shiny new Jeep for the bag of supplies we picked up on the way through town. The scope of work required to fix the old place is daunting. Bert joked it looks more like a family curse than an inheritance when I showed him the pictures. He tried to convince me to just hire someone to tear it down and sell the land. The farmer who owns the surrounding acreage would probably buy it, but this house and I are all that’s left, the only ones who can share the memories.
I scrub the counters until the gray grit gives way to the pink flecked white Formica underneath years of neglect. Pink, like the prom dress Mom surprised me with when I told her I didn’t want to go and she thought it was because I didn’t own anything nice enough. Pink like the anger tinting her cheeks when I told her I’d rather go in my brother’s old suit, even if it was at least two sizes too large for me. Better swimming in a dated suit that gave me space to breathe for the first time in years than strangling in the expensive gown in my size she blew her budget on. I’m not crying; it’s just sweat dripping onto the grease-stained stove top. This is more work than I thought it would be. Harder work. No one has lived here since Mom died and Dad ended up at the long-term care home with his cirrhosis and his bad temper. Two years sitting empty left their toll. The paperwork I got from the lawyer said a neighbor was supposed to drop in and look after the place after Dad moved into the home. I guess no one gave her the memo. Didn’t stop her from taking the monthly checks for her housekeeping services.
I shouldn’t shoulder the guilt over not being here to oversee things. Not when I wasn’t welcome. Sometimes, I think the family ended when my brother came home from his first tour of duty in a casket. Dad got drunk, and Mom got silent, and I got gone. Left after my graduation and didn’t look back. I might have gone away, regardless.
This old house reminds me of being a teenager, small, scared, and alone. Those years when it seemed like I was holding my breath waiting for the chance to become.
I’m not waiting now. I’ve made a life with Bert far from here. So I scrub the counters, the stove top, and the years of accumulated grease from the oven. I wipe the windows and clean out the fridge, thankful at least someone removed all the food before unplugging it years ago. I scrub every inch of the kitchen as though enough elbow grease might somehow replace the irreplaceable. Restart a pulse long since still.
It’s a shock when Bert wraps his arms around me from behind as I’m sweeping. I jump at his touch, fumbling and then clutching the broom to my chest. He chuckles, a low, happy rumble so out of place here it shocks me almost as much as my not hearing him approach. It jars me out of my melancholy and almost makes me smile too. Almost.
“Sh. Relax, it’s just me.” He props his chin on my shoulder and murmurs near my ear. “Didn’t mean to startle you.”
I tip my head back to look at him. “Hey. Guess this place has me on edge.”
“Hey, yourself. How long have you been up?”
I don’t know for sure, but the grimy windows are aglow with the first light of dawn now. Hours. “Doesn’t matter; I couldn’t sleep. There’s so much to do before we can leave.”
Bert tightens his arms around me, and the warmth of his body makes me more aware of the chill air. I’m cold, so I turn in his arms and burrow into his embrace, tucking his fuzzy bathrobe around me and getting another chuckle out of him.
“You know I packed your robe, too, if you’re cold.” Bert teases, knowing it’s not really the robe I want. It’s being close to him.
“Yours is better,” I reply, the words familiar between us, part of a routine.
“It’s exactly the same.” Bert makes no move to pull away or refuse me access as I link my fingers behind his back, the robe soft and warm around us.
“Nope. Sharing is better,” I insist.
“Whatever you say, Kev.” Bert kisses the top of my head. He holds me for a while, and the steady beat of his heart fills the silent spaces from last night. I’m not sure how long we stand there. His presence makes this easier.
“You want to come back to bed for a little while before we tackle the rest of this?” Bert gestures at the ruins of the house.
“No. Can we go somewhere for breakfast?” I pull my arms out from under his robe. He tucks it closed again.
“Sure. Where did you have in mind?”
I shake my head. “Anywhere.” I mean anywhere other than here, some place without all the memories to haunt it.
“Sure, go get dressed, and I’ll see if I can search our options. Here, hang this upstairs?” Bert shrugs out of his robe and hands it to me. He pulls out his phone and turns his attention to it, expecting me to go.
I don’t want to leave him to venture back up the stairs into the silence of my old room, but I go. Each step away from him drives the chill of this place deeper. I hurry my steps, all but sprinting from the stairs to my suitcase. I throw on the first warm things I find and jog back to my husband. He smiles at me.
“Ready?” Bert’s already wearing his light fall jacket. He’s got his keys in one hand and his phone in the other.
“Yep. Where are we going?” I already have my shoes on. The floors are too filthy to risk walking barefoot, even though it goes against years of habit not to kick them off by the door. I pull on my jacket, and we leave.
“No signal out here, but I seem to recall passing a diner by the gas station we stopped at yesterday. That should do the trick.” Bert takes my hand as we walk across grass icy in the morning light.
It’s still early fall, too soon for snow, but that doesn’t stop the grass from crunching underfoot. My breath frosts the air as we get into the Jeep. Bert leans over the console to kiss me before he puts the car into gear. It’s nice. A needed affection. A reminder he’s here with me, even if he didn’t want to be.
We get to the end of the long, tree-lined drive before the engine stalls. Bert tries to restart it, but the car stutters and stops again. And again, when he gives the key another twist.
We pop the hood and get out to look. Bert isn’t a car guy. He likes the aesthetic of the Jeep, even though I told him it wasn’t the most reliable cold-weather vehicle. I’m not really a car person either, but my brother was. From the time he got his learner’s permit at fifteen until his death, he always seemed happiest when he was elbows deep in an engine.
I was eleven when he got an old clunker and a hand-me-down set of tools from our uncle to fix it with. My child’s logic thought if I just copied him, I might matter to my family the same as him. They’d see me as more than a future wife and mother.
I convinced myself if I was enough like him, then my family might see me under the frilly dresses my parents delighted in making me wear. If I could just be like Levi, they might offer me a future as bright and shiny as his. So I copied him. I didn’t love cars, but I picked up a thing or two hanging around, pestering him as often as he’d allow.
The Jeep has a blown spark plug. Weird, since I’m pretty sure we’d have heard it break yesterday on the drive here. Must have just happened. Which means we should be able to start it up and get it to a shop, but breakfast is probably out. At least until we get the car to a garage.
“That’s going to need a mechanic.” I gesture to the broken plug.
Bert gives me a look. “If you say so. Do I need to get a tow or can we drive it there?”
“Should be able to drive it.” I poke around to see if there’s anything else obviously amiss, but the engine seems fine. I shrug and close the hood. “Might be good to call ahead and make sure they can take it today, if you can get enough signal.”
“On it.” Bert gets back into the vehicle and pulls out his phone to find a garage. I’m not ready to get back in the car. Something about this feels wrong. I need fresh air. There should be nothing but open air behind me. A few more feet of driveway and then the empty rural road. I step back, right into a wall of ice where the edge of the property ought to be.
The cold is so intense it steals the breath from my lungs and anchors my feet to the ground. I try to inhale or cry out for help, but the air catches in my throat. I’m frozen. Cold and unable to move. My vision tunnels. My head swims like I’m buzzed without drinking a drop.
The world tilts and spins around me, and all I can think about is getting back to Bert. He catches my eye through the windshield, watching me, oblivious to whatever unseen force is trapping me here. I stop trying to step back and put all my strength into getting to him.
I jolt away from the icy barrier holding me in place, only to stumble and catch myself against the car’s hood. Bert looks concerned as I remain braced, trying to catch my breath.
“Kev, what’s wrong?” He opens the door and comes to stand beside me.
“Nothing.” I try to wave him off. “Just a dizzy spell. Must be hungrier than I thought. I’m fine.” Bert’s concerned gaze bores into me. “Really,” I insist. “The sooner we take the car in, the sooner we can grab a bite to eat.”
My loving husband purses his lips. He seems poised to question me more or argue I’m not fine, but he thinks better of it. “Well, the internet isn’t coming in any better here than it was inside the house. We’ll just have to hope we get a signal on the way into town. Or else the folks at the gas station might be able to point us to a garage.”
We both get back in the car. The engine won’t start, and I suspect we aren’t bringing the car anywhere any time soon. After several more attempts, the car splutters to life.
“Yes!” Bert pounds the steering wheel in triumph. The engine grumbles loudly as we idle; the lights on the dash dim and surge.
“Go, before we stall again,” I urge, patting his thigh.
Bert puts the car in gear and hits the gas. We make it to the property line before the engine cuts out and the car stops. Not a slow roll to a standstill as if we’d run out of power either. No, this is an instantaneous loss of momentum that shouldn’t be possible. Even if we were barely rolling. It’s a lurch as though we’ve slammed into an invisible barrier.
My stomach drops at the confirmation we’re stuck here. Trapped, just like in my childhood nightmares. Stuck in a life that could never fit.
Bert was right; we should never have come here. Back to a home that never really existed. Back to a place that can’t accept me as I am. The whispers of remembered conversations, telling me who I ought to be, who I could never be, swell inside my head until I want to scream them into silence. But I know I can’t out scream the voices of the past. Not when they only exist in my head.
I scramble out of the car and stride across the lawn. It’s possible whatever is keeping us here is only at the end of the driveway. I pause at the low stone wall demarcating the property line. I reach out ahead, desperate for the barrier to be a silly fantasy. Not real. It can’t be real.
My hand plunges into the ice of an invisible wall again. The cold burns my bare fingers, pain pulsing along my arm. I can’t seem to pull back, but as I watch, the tips of my fingers turn a bright red. They start to tinge blue. I need to pull away before the cold destroys my unprotected flesh. But I can’t seem to make my hand obey me.
Bert pulls me away from the barrier. His familiar voice is nothing but a roaring in my ears as I stare at my fingers. I half expect to see nothing but necrotic flesh where healthy skin used to be.
As he pulls me back, I stare at my hand, seeing wrongness. Not frostbite, but chipped polish from a manicure I got when I was powerless. My teenage self felt like I didn’t have any choice but to agree to something that made my insides twist with wrongness. I blink, and the French tips fade back into my usual neatly trimmed nails. No polish. My hand is fine. I’m not fine.
“Kevin?” Bert turns me to face him, holding me by both shoulders. The jostling tears my attention away from the searing pins and needles of my hand returning to a normal temperature.
“This is going to sound crazy, but I don’t think the house is going to let us leave.”
“What?”
“That’s the property line, and I can’t cross it.” I point at the barrier.
Bert gives me an incredulous look. “What are you talking about?”
“Try to step over the wall.” I gesture—seeing is believing, right?
Bert glances from me to the wall. He purses his lips like he does when he thinks I’m being foolish but doesn’t want to start a fight. He takes a step toward the wall. I want to grab him, stop him before he experiences the searing cold for himself. But we can’t come up with a way out of this until he accepts there’s a problem to solve.
Bert steps over the low wall, turns, and gives me an expectant look. “Well?”
“But…” I shake my head. Could I have imagined the barrier?
“Come on. If we follow the road, we’re bound to get a phone signal eventually. Or the neighbors must have a landline to call for a tow.” He offers me his hand. I hesitate, unwilling to experience more of the burning cold. Bert reaches through the barrier for me. I take his hand, trusting him to pull me through.
This time, I scream when the cold engulfs me. Bert stops pulling when he has my arm elbow-deep in the barrier.
“Kevin? What the hell is going on here?”
I just shake my head, unable to answer through the pain. He steps back over the wall and pulls me away from it. I sit heavily on the ground, shivering like I might break into pieces.
“Your arm looks burned,” Bert says, staring at it like something impossible.
It is impossible. I’m too numb with the realization that he can leave, and I’ll be all alone here. Trapped with my ghosts.
“New plan,” Bert continues. “Let’s get you back inside to warm up while I go for help.”
I hate that plan. I don’t want him to leave. Bert hauls me to my feet, and I hobble back up the long drive to the house. I’m cold and exhausted from cleaning all night, and all I want to do is go to bed so I can wake up from this nightmare.
“Stay with me?” I ask as Bert guides me to the recliner where my father drank away the last few healthy years of his life. I don’t want to sit in it, but it’s the most intact piece of furniture left.
Bert shakes his head. “One of us has to go for help. We need food and water.”
I grimace. He’s right. The house has a deep well, but the water requires a pump to access it. An electric pump. My folks had a generator for emergencies, but there’s no fuel left. At least there’s still a woodstove in the living room for extra heat and a cord of dusty wood stacked inside the shed.
Wood Dad didn’t have the strength to carry inside by the end of his illness. I don’t want to think of him wasting away, trapped and alone. It’s not my fault. It’s not.
Even if the last time we spoke, we fought. I don’t want to be stuck here. I can’t stay here. But I can’t leave either. The barrier is seeing to that.
“Your hands are like ice, and you’re clearly not well. I told you to pack a warmer jacket.” Bert tsks. “Stay here, rest.” Bert takes my hands between his and tries to chafe some warmth into them. “We’ll figure this out.” He brushes his lips against my temple.
“I guess I’ll start a fire.” I gesture toward the squat iron stove.
Bert nods. “Just be sure the chimney bits are clear. I still say we should tear the place down, but I’d rather not burn it while you’re inside.” He flashes one of his teasing smiles, but the attempt at humor falls flat.
“I’ll check the vents. I’m sure it’s fine.” Though now that he’s mentioned the possibility it’s not, I’m less certain. Still, the cold seems to have sunk into my bones, and I need the fire to breathe warmth back into me. “Go. The sooner you leave, the sooner you’ll be back.”
“Yeah. Guess I’ll try the car once more before giving up on it.”
“Good idea. Drive it straight to a garage if it starts,” I suggest.
Bert gathers me in his arms for a quick kiss goodbye. His embrace blocks out some of the cold. Until I realize if the house is keeping me here, Bert’s car might start just fine without me in it. And there’s nothing stopping him from leaving and never coming back. That’s what I did when I left. Never even looked back until I got the inheritance papers from the lawyer.
Bert turns in the doorway, almost like he can read my thoughts. It makes me shiver. “I’ll be back as soon as I can, Kev.”
I nod. No sense arguing. Either he’ll come back, or he won’t. And, of course, he will come back. This place and the ghosts of the past are messing with my head. It would be easier if they’d only stop whispering in my head, subvocal reminders of things that no longer matter.
I grab a fresh garbage bag from the stash of cleaning supplies and open the grate on the woodstove. It’s as big a mess as everything else here. Dad never did raise a hand to keep the house tidy. That wasn’t his job, he’d say. I get to work shoveling out the accumulated ash and a bit of partially burned wood.
The distant rumbling purr of Bert’s motor starting makes my hands tremble. The engine sounds fine from here. From inside, I can discern no sign of the busted spark plug. The engine revs, then the tires crunch over the last of the gravel drive and onto the asphalt of the road, and the car sounds fade into the distance. Bert is gone, and I’m alone with my memories.
There’s something in the ashes; I cut my fingers on a shard of broken glass while trying to pull it out. It’s a badly charred picture frame. One I recognize from my parents’ bedroom. It used to be a pretty thing, filigree metal and wood evoking tree branches to shape the word family. He must not have let the fire burn for long after throwing this in. There’s still some charred photo paper pinned under the broken pane of glass.
I recognize the photo from what little remains. Mom took a picture of the four of us every holiday season to add to the front of the stack. This frame held over a decade’s worth of family photos. And now they’re reduced to fragments and ash.
The bit peeking up at me is a version of me I hate to see. A little boy with long curly hair in bows, a green satin dress to match his brother’s tie, and a smile so sad it makes me want to cry. I hated that dress. Loathed the picture. I was twelve, and it was the last year I let Mom badger me into a dress. It’s jarring to see it there, surrounded in ruin. Eerie that the only part of the photo family to remain is a little girl who never really existed.
I use the dustpan to flip the remains of the frame, broken glass and all, into the trash. The picture was a lie. It was always a lie, and it can’t change who I am. But when I catch my reflection in the broken glass, all I can see is her long hair framing my face. I blink, and my hair is short again. As short as I’ve kept it since I left home and didn’t have to justify my appearance to anyone.
I run my fingers through my hair to be sure, leaving ashy streaks that make me grimace. I need a shower. But we won’t have water for bathing until there’s power.
It’s still freezing in here, so I finish cleaning the belly of the stove and inspect it as best I can. I recall a time when I hung on Dad’s every word as he passed on the manly secrets of fire to my brother. There’s a draught through the flue, so I’m pretty sure it’s open enough not to fill the house with smoke or carbon monoxide. I find the kindling in the bin where Dad kept it and get a fire started with the matches he kept on the shelf above the kindling. Dad always was a creature of habit. Too bad he let his habits kill him.
Once I get it burning, the heat of the fire makes the house bearable. I sit with my back to the iron stove, soaking in the first warmth I’ve felt outside of Bert’s arms since we got here.
It’s a mistake. The sweet tang of woodsmoke reminds me of cozy winters with my family before I realized I was too different to ever fit here. It’s as warm as my mother’s hugs and my father’s approval, back before I got too old to harbor anything but antipathy for the things that could earn it.
I can’t sit there with the heat burning into me as deep as the cold outside. I’m restless, so I pace around the house, glancing up the long drive for any sign of Bert. He’s not there, and no amount of staring at nothing will get him here any faster. I go back to clearing away years of neglect from the living room.
The piles of trash and empty bottles by Dad’s favorite chair are a depressing portrait of how he spent his final years after Mom died and before the care home. I try not to think about it. Try not to see the flashes of the past every time something triggers a memory. I don’t want to remember. I thought this might be cathartic, but wading through the past tugs at long-buried parts of my psyche. The memories hang over me like a threat, holding me captive until I’m choking on the ghosts of my childhood. I’m afraid they won’t let go until I’m as dead as they are.
I fill several bags of trash before the floor is clear enough to sweep. It’s depressing how much work remains, but I feel lighter after cleaning out all the accumulated junk of a lifetime from downstairs.
I don’t know if I can face cleaning out the garage where I spent so much time with my brother. The bathroom where I cut my own hair in front of Mom’s vanity and told her who I am. Where she ignored me and pretended nothing had changed. The bedroom with the pink walls I hated makes me claustrophobic.
I want to search for a memory that doesn’t hurt, but everything seems to have sharp edges. The longer I’m here, the more it seems like the past is a pile of broken glass and holding onto it will only tear me to ribbons.
It gets late, and Bert isn’t back. I keep cleaning until it’s too dark to see. Then I work some more by the light of my phone until its battery dies. Not as though it was good for anything else with no signal.
It’s too dark to see what I’m doing inside, but the sky is bright with moonlight. Brighter than it ever seems in the city. Enough to see the driveway. I walk along the gravel to the end. And run into the same wall of ice I hit before. Whatever this place wants with me, it isn’t ready to release me. I go back to the house and continue dismantling the memories.
I haul the bags of trash out onto the empty front porch. When that’s done, I drag the broken furniture out too. Everything I can carry on my own follows—chairs, tables, cabinets and shelves, rugs, the ancient console television. All of it is so much worn out and dated detritus of the past. I leave it heaped outside to load into the dumpster that’s supposed to arrive sometime this week. Dad’s recliner pinches my fingers as I force it through the front door, and I drop it where I stand, kicking it and cursing.
I hate the stupid chair. Hate everything about it. Tears burn my eyes, and I don’t stop spitting vitriol until I’m curled up in the chair, sobbing and wishing things could have been different.
That’s where Bert finds me when he gets back hours later. I’m sure it must be after midnight, but it’s only nine, according to his phone. I forgot how early the moon can rise in October, how bright it shines with no city lights to dim its glow.
The Jeep’s broken spark plug is still stuck in the engine block. The shop couldn’t get to it today. Bert spent most of the day waiting in case they had a gap in the schedule to squeeze us in, but it never happened.
The shop let him pay for a rental car while they fix his since they’re keeping the Jeep overnight. It was after six by then, so he had to go two towns over to find an open grocery store. I don’t miss that part of small-town life. There’s a lot I don’t miss. The stillness of nature and the bright moon hanging low in the sky as my husband takes my hand and leads me inside, though—that I’ve missed.
Bert thought to buy wet wipes to clean up with, and I’m grateful to be able to swab away some of the grime from my skin before we eat. He offers me a fully charged battery pack for my dead phone, courtesy of the garage lobby where he spent his day. He got us a lukewarm rotisserie chicken for dinner. I’m sure it was hot when he bought it, but not so much anymore. I’m not complaining. He came back to me.
By the time we finish eating, I’m exhausted. Bert puts away the rest of the groceries he picked up, nothing requiring refrigeration, while I adjust the woodstove’s damper down for the night. Then we head up to bed. Lying there in the dark, the doubts and memories creep in on me again.
I can hear all the critical voices that used to drag me down. People calling me things I never was. I don’t want to listen. I left those voices behind, but being alone with them all day makes them harder to ignore.
Bert seems to notice my mood. He takes my hand under the covers, offering comfort. “How are you doing, love? This has got to be hard on you.”
“Yeah. Didn’t think I’d feel this much. Not that I miss them, I barely knew them anymore. I miss the possibility. The potential we could have been a family again.” I shift closer to him in the too-small bed.
“I’m sorry.” Bert wraps his arms around me. “I’ll listen if you want to talk about it.”
I shake my head, too tired to talk through all the emotions tangled up inside of me. Mostly I’m afraid I’ll be trapped here forever, that the past will never let me leave.
I didn’t think I’d want to be physical with Bert tonight. Not here. But when he spoons up against me under the covers, I’m struck by my need for him. I need to know he sees me, the real me, and that he wants me as I am.
I grind my ass against his groin.
Bert freezes. “You sure?”
“Yeah. Want you to love me.” I grind more insistently. Bert pushes forward to meet me. He kisses along my neck, lips brushing over my stubbled jaw.
“I always love you,” Bert whispers near my ear. “Love kissing you.” He rubs his fingers over my cheek. I crane my head to capture his lips with mine. It’s worth risking beard burn to connect with the man I love. Bert seems to agree, even though neither of us has had a chance to shave or wash since we left our cozy condo to fix up this place. I roll around to face him, savoring the sensation of his dick hardening against me when I rock my hips into him.
I moan, empowered at the effect I have on him. Growing up in this room, I was so certain no one could ever love me the way he does. I bought into the lie that if I tried to break the facade of who I had to be, it would mean I’d have to give up any chance at romantic love.
But Bert reminds me every day that the voice in my head telling me I have to be good enough to be worthy of love is wrong. I am lovable. I am loved. And Bert makes love to me there in the dark bedroom where I used to cry myself to sleep thinking I’d never get to be open about who I am.
I’m too comfortable in my lover’s arms to worry about the once familiar sounds of this old room. The creaking of the house settling around us, the crack of a log succumbing to the fire in the stove below us. The rattling of bare tree limbs outside the window and the soughing of the icy wind.
Branches tap on the window, sounding almost like the clink of a bottle being set down or my dad’s alcohol-roughened laughter. He’s not here. He’s dead, and the noise is just in my memories now. None of it matters as Bert holds me closer.
WHEN I WAKE up, it’s still dark outside, but the first blush of dawn on the horizon reminds me of countless other dawns I met within these four walls. I get up and brace myself to face the rest of the work. I’m already shivering from the chill in the air. The fire must have burned out overnight. I’ll have to build it back up when I go downstairs.
Yesterday’s certainty I was trapped here by some unseen force seems like a silly flight of fancy after a good night’s rest. Still, the memories of home I held on to in my heart when we planned this trip are nothing like the realities of being here. It seems far too much like being held captive to want to linger any longer than it takes to clean out the house and get it ready to sell.
The steady progress I made yesterday leaves me hopeful that together Bert and I can finish our task by the end of the week. We can leave this place behind for good. I consider waking him, but he looks so peaceful sleeping in a bed I never dreamed I’d share with a man who loves me. I let him rest. He’s never been a morning person. Bert will be happier to get to work if I can press a warm cup of coffee into his hands when I wake him.
If only the electric company would get the power restored, I could do that easily. As the situation stands, I can heat some bottled water on the woodstove. I’ll wake him with a hot mug of the instant coffee he picked up at the grocery store. I might even make some toast to go with it. Not exactly a gourmet brunch like we’d have at home, but better than nothing.
After a moment’s hesitation, I pull on Bert’s robe, leaving my identical one on the hook where he placed it beside his when we arrived here. He’ll grumble about it, but I think he secretly appreciates the comfort I take in his scent and wrapping myself in something of his like a claim.
When I reach the bottom of the stairs, I expect to see the living room cleared of the detritus of my father’s final years. The floors should be bare and ready for whatever the new owner wants to make of them.
What I find instead is the same familiar outline of furniture that hasn’t been so much as rearranged since Levi died. As if turning our home into a monument to his life might erase his death. I know I dragged it all outside last night. I still have the scrape on my knuckles from barking them against the jamb while I wrestled with Dad’s chair in the doorway. And yet, here it all is, every item of furniture back where it sat when we first arrived to survey the mess.
The scene in front of me is so impossible that I close my eyes. I stand there, wrapped in Bert’s robe like armor, willing the mess to be gone. I know I cleaned this room already. It should look the way it did last night when I let Bert lead me up to bed.
When I peek at the room again, the garbage and old bottles are still heaped around Dad’s favorite recliner. I walk to the chair, stunned with disbelief. Surely, I didn’t imagine cleaning out all this old junk?
It’s as if while we slept, the room reset to the exact way we found it when we opened the doors with the keys the estate agent gave us. Like I never laid a hand on it. I press on my scraped knuckles; the sting reminds me I’m here, and this is real. I really cut myself last night, and the chair that caused the injury is still sitting just where it was before I moved it.
Part of me wonders if Bert might be playing some absurd prank. But I cannot fathom a reason he’d go to the trouble when he’d only have to help me clear away the mess a second time.
I must have dreamed it. Yesterday was a long day, and I must have curled up in the chair, remembering better times. Before Levi died and Dad crawled all the way into the bottle. Before Mom was so checked out she couldn’t even pretend to care about the kid she still had. Just before.
I must have dreamed about cleaning the living room. It’s the only answer that makes sense. I’ve been thinking about nothing else aside from the daunting task of how to tackle each room. Those thoughts and plans must have bled into my dreams. Sometimes they can feel so real.
Mystery solved, I go to the stove and reach for the door, wary the metal might still be warm from last night’s dying embers. The stove is as cold as ice to my touch. It must have gone out as soon as we retired to our bed.
Except, when I open it, the ash is far too thick to be just from the logs I burned yesterday. The broken glass covering the charred picture it protected glints up at me from the belly of the stove.
A hand on my shoulder makes me scream, jumping back.
Bert laughs. “Relax, Kev, it’s just me.” He pulls me into a good morning kiss. “You’re so jumpy since we arrived.”
“Sorry. I guess I’m on edge. There’s something strange about this place.”
“I won’t argue with you there. I did suggest we should hire a company to take care of the mess. Or sell it as is.” He bops me on the nose.
The gesture makes me irrationally angry with him. As if I’m some kid he told not to run on a slippery pool deck whining to him now that I’ve skinned my knee after ignoring his wisdom. It’s infuriating, even if he is right.
This is my family’s home. My last chance to find—what? Absolution? Acceptance? Maybe it’s a chance to say goodbye. But is it a farewell to the family that shaped me, or the girl I never was?
I don’t quite know what I came here to find, but it wasn’t Bert’s snobbish assumption that he knows best. It wasn’t to have him belittle me as if I were some silly creature ruled by my emotions and easily dismissed by men who know better.
I pull away from him and tug his robe tighter, taking less comfort in the gesture than usual.
“Don’t be surly with me. You know it’s the truth.” Bert wraps his arms around me, hugging me from behind.
I normally crave his affection, but I am surly toward him right now. I want to shrug him off, but that will only prove him right. Ugh. As he kisses behind my ear, I go pliant in his arms.
“I didn’t mean to upset you, Kev. I know you’re going through a lot right now. It’s hard to say goodbye, even if they don’t deserve your grief.”
Do they? I don’t know. The bitter old man who drank himself to death here might not need me to mourn him. He might have given up any claim he had on me when he let me walk out of his life without even trying to see if I was all right. But he wasn’t always that man.
Dad wasn’t always drowning too deep in his own grief to notice mine. Mom wasn’t always so afraid to lose another piece of herself that she locked her heart away from anything that might matter enough to be upset over losing.
I might not have known my parents these last years, but as long as they were alive, there was always a chance they might return to me. Become a part of my life again. Get to know the man they raised, even if they expected a woman in his place. We could have reconciled, and now we can’t. This grief is like all the eulogies spoken over my brother’s grave by people who barely knew him. I’m not mourning the person as much as I’m mourning the potential I lost along with them.
I don’t want to be here. But I have to lay these memories and the hope that things could have been different to rest. Bury it and mourn.
“Kev?” Bert turns me to face him, and I let him.
“Yeah.” I clear my throat. “You’re right. It’s hard to say goodbye.”
“Come on; let’s see if we can put together a decent breakfast without modern technology.” Bert tries to put a cheery face on it.
“The horror,” I say dryly, but I let him pull me into the kitchen. I stumble at the threshold, not nearly as shocked as I perhaps should be to find the counters that I scrubbed for hours on our first sleepless night here are back to being coated in a thick patina of dust and grime.
Those hours of scrubbing seem to have happened a lifetime ago. To some other version of me. Perhaps that’s what’s happening here. Hysterical laughter bubbles up in me at the sight, but I don’t let it spill from my lips because if I do, I know it will soon turn to sobs. And I don’t think I can explain my hysterics to Bert.
The sense of being trapped here settles over me again. I push back the despair that I’ll never make a dent in the work to be done here, no matter how hard I toil. I still have to try. The burden settles over me, and it all seems so inevitable.
Maybe it is. Maybe I can scrub this kitchen a thousand-thousand times only to wake and find all my hard work erased. For all I know, there are infinite versions of this decaying house. Each one as filthy as the last and I won’t be able to leave until I’ve cleaned them all. Until I find one that isn’t crumbling into disrepair. One that doesn’t mirror how the family who lived here fell apart.
I want to fall on the floor and weep at the pointlessness of it all. If I do, I’m not sure I’ll ever get back up. And there’s Bert to consider. So I square my shoulders, face the impossibility of my situation head-on, and grab a trash bag and a pair of thick rubber gloves. Time to clean the woodstove again. It’s too cold, and a fire in the stove will be just the thing to fill our bellies with something warm and keep the worst of the chill at bay. Everything will look more manageable with coffee in hand. Even if it is the cheapest instant crap mixed with powdered nondairy creamer.
THE SECOND DAY passes similarly to the first. Bert and I work in the kitchen together after breakfast, scrubbing away years of accumulated grime. Bert doesn’t seem to remember I’ve already done this job before, on that first sleepless night.
He doesn’t comment about having to help me drag furniture out to the property line. I embrace the desperate hope that if we move it far enough from the house, whatever power put it back won’t be able to reach it. Except I wasn’t imagining things yesterday. I still can’t cross the property line to bring the bags of trash and ruined furniture those last few feet to the edge of the road. If Bert notices, he says nothing, agreeably piling everything at the side of the long gravel drive as far as I can take it.
We’ve restored my work from the previous day and are about to work on the garage, Levi’s former domain, when Bert gets a call. I side-eye him, recalling the complete lack of phone service yesterday. He answers like nothing is odd about suddenly getting a call when it should be impossible.
“The car is ready. You okay to stay here while I go pick it up?” He sticks his phone back in his pocket.
“Yeah. No problem. Go ahead.” I nod, knowing in my bones I couldn’t go with him if I wanted to. The same force that held me here yesterday would do likewise today. Even if I’d sound beyond foolish to say as much aloud, I know it to be true. I’m trapped here. Trapped as I was when I was a child. With the walls closing in and no way to see a happy future if I didn’t get out and go as far from here as my ambitions could carry me. “I’ll get started on the upstairs.”
Bert kisses me goodbye and leaves to trade in the loaner for his Jeep. I consider going upstairs to pack up the more intimate traces of my life here. I could scrub away every scrap of evidence of the child I used to be. Throw out every keepsake and memento. Every childish treasure. Then move on to Levi’s room and the garage and do the same for him.
I could uproot every trace of the family that no longer lives here. I should. That’s the entire purpose of this final visit. Part of me wants to. And part of me knows it won’t be enough to root out all the memories. Silence the voices of the past. It won’t be enough to keep the progress we’ve made downstairs. Nothing will ever be enough. Part of me will always be trapped here in this house, always cold and alone.
Shivering, I go to the woodstove and stack more logs into the guttering fire. The heat pours off the iron belly of the stove. Its warmth is a comfort against the bleakness of the unending toil that stretches ahead of me. I sit on the floor with my back to the wall of heat, letting it suffuse my body as I survey what remains on the ground floor.
I used to sit like this with my parents and Levi on the long cold winter nights. Storms knock out the power here frequently enough that we often relied on this stove to heat the house in the bitter cold of a blizzard. There were nights when, with a child’s fancy, I thought the fire glowing within the stove’s belly might be the last point of heat and light amid the desolation of winter. Muffled under a thick layer of snow, it was easy to imagine we were the only ones left in the world.
Our little family, sustained by our little fire, tucked away from civilization. The bonds of family held us together. When I was small, those close ties were a comforting thought. As I grew, their love felt more and more like a cage. After Levi, those frigid nights gathered around the fire only meant forced proximity to my silently mourning parents and their unpredictable moods.
I can’t sit there anymore. The heat might eat me alive if I rest here for another moment. Doubtless, it could devour me as surely as it devoured the family photo my father fed to it. My fingers and toes are warm enough to get back to cleaning.
Bert and I cleaned out the downstairs before he left, so I climb the stairs to my parents’ bedroom next. The mess isn’t as comprehensive here. Mom always kept her space neat and tidy. Everything in its place and a place for everything. Knowing Dad, he wouldn’t have been able to bear changing anything in their room after she passed.
Sure enough, her clothing is still hanging next to his in the closet. Her makeup, crusted in a layer of thick dust, remains where she left it on the bathroom counter. A bottle of her favorite perfume sits out with the cap next to it. That is conspicuously clean-looking. Almost like she’ll be along at any moment to use it. Or like he might have sprayed it sometimes, just to smell her.
On a whim, I depress the top of the bottle, and the sickly-sweet floral fragrance reminds me of her. The visceral reminder of Mom makes my heart ache for Dad in a way nothing else has since I heard they’re both dead. Whatever else they were, the two of them loved each other.
I can’t imagine my dad living without my mom. No wonder the house is a disaster area without her to keep it running. She held him together. He could have learned. Should have helped. Just as quick as the pang of sorrow hit, it turns to anger at him for making this place a cage for her too. A pretty cage of her own choosing. One she wanted me to be content with as my lot in life.
They wanted me to accept being a wife and mother as the peak of my potential. It’s not. Even if I was their daughter, it shouldn’t have meant that was all I’d ever be. I’m angry at both of them for that. So angry it’s like ice in my veins, moving through me in a freezing wave and leaving guilt in its wake. Guilt that I can’t grieve them the way I should. They were my parents, and knowing they’re dead just leaves me numb.
It’s all so pointless. I put the cap on the perfume and set it aside to bring with us. The sort of memento I should want to carry with me along with their ghosts. My cousins must have taken all the good jewelry after Mom died; there’s no trace of it here. The blank walls make it clear the family photo wasn’t the only one my father burned or otherwise disposed of. That’s fine. There’s nothing else I want from them.
Bert finds me shoving everything into trash bags, a growing pile of them, crammed full of my parents’ personal effects, scattered all around me.
“You’ve been busy,” he observes, leaning into the doorway.
“What do you mean?” I stop stuffing the bag in my hands to look up at him. Self-conscious under his scrutiny, I swipe away sweat from my brow. I’ve amassed quite the heap of clothing. That must be what he means. We can probably drop the lot of it from the window instead of carrying each bag down the stairs.
Bert shrugs. “I just mean you’ve made quite the dent in this. Are we donating any of it?”
It’s my turn to shrug. I don’t even know where we’d go to take things here. “Most of it probably isn’t in good enough condition.” The dampness from the walls downstairs didn’t spare the bedrooms. Everything in here has the faint reek of mildew. Or it only seems faint because I’ve been breathing it in all day. I shiver, and Bert comes over to me, lays a warm hand on my shoulder.
“You’re freezing again. Come warm up by the fire.” He slips his arm around me to guide me away from my Sisyphean task and down the stairs without waiting for a reply. “They fixed the car. Good as new.”
“That’s good.”
“It is.” He nods decisively. “Now that you’ve seen sense about selling, we can leave as soon as we finish cleaning out all this trash.”
“Right,” I agree, letting him take charge. When did ceding choices to him become a habit? I shake off the thought. We’re equals. That’s always been the deal between us. Partners.
It’s the house getting to me. This cursed house and the memories that won’t leave me alone.
We fix a simple dinner of canned soup reheated on the woodstove. The food and Bert—acting more like himself as we share it with two spoons and one can—thaw the chill inside me.
We go back to bagging up the contents of my parents’ room after dinner. The memories are still thick as the layer of dust in here, but talking about our friends in the city takes my focus away from what we’re doing. I don’t have time to dwell on the silky slither of black fabric over my fingers when I pull out the dress Mom wore to Levi’s funeral. Or think about the matching outfit that probably still lurks in my old closet.
I don’t contribute much to the conversation, but Bert seems to understand. The job goes faster with two people. We’re nearly finished in my parents’ room when it gets too dark to see.
We won’t make any more progress tonight, but I check on the fire again to be sure it will burn until morning and keep the chill at bay. Then Bert cajoles me into bed, and I take comfort in his arms.
“WHAT’S GOING ON here?” Bert is standing over the bed. I blink up at him.
“What do you mean?”
“Is this some kind of joke? Your idea of a prank?” he demands, not explaining himself in the least.
I sit up and rub the sleep from my eyes. My breath fogs the air. It’s colder than ever this morning. I’ve got a sneaking suspicion I’ll find the woodstove still full of long-dead ash and the remains of the family photo. The walls are closing in, and Bert finally seems to notice something is wrong.
“I’m not sure what you’re talking about, Bert,” I say cautiously. Rising to join him, I cast a longing glance at the robe he’s wearing over his warmest outfit, then grab mine from the hook on the wall. He doesn’t appear to be in a sharing mood.
“You put everything back.” His voice is flat. “Why? If you’re not ready to let it go, we can just leave it to rot until you are. Why go through all the trouble of cleaning just to dump everything back out again?”
I laugh. “You think I put everything back?”
“Well, who else could have done it?”
“I don’t know. But it wasn’t me.”
“You think it’s the house?” Bert scoffs. “It what? Reset itself, like some sort of horrific video game?”
“I don’t know what it is. And I’ve already cleaned the downstairs twice. You know how I feel about scrubbing dirt. Why, in all that is holy, would I arrange to have to clean the mess a third time? Besides, use your head, even if I wanted to, how would I have undusted every surface?”
My logic gives him pause. There’s a reason we pay for a cleaning service to come to our condo. And there’s no way I could have perfectly recreated the years of grime I’ve scrubbed away twice now.
“I think if neither of us put everything back, we should leave. Now.”
“It won’t let me.” I grind the words out through gritted teeth.
“That’s nonsense. I had no trouble coming and going.”
“Except when I was in the car with you.”
Bert considers, then he lifts our suitcase onto the rumpled bed and starts throwing everything we brought with us inside. “We’ll just have to try again. Get whatever you want to keep and we’ll arrange for a service to handle the mess once we’re home.”
With a sigh, I join him in repacking. There isn’t much of sentimental value here. I duck out to grab Mom’s perfume, the only untouched item in my parents’ reset ensuite bathroom.
“You ready?” Bert asks as I tuck the bottle into our bag. “We should leave. Get as far away as we can.”
“It’s worth another try.” I shrug my agreement since I don’t have any better ideas. Bert finishes packing.
I follow him down the stairs. It reminds me of a terrible parody of Christmas mornings long past. The anticipation that something magical happened while I slept. Levi used to hold my hand, and the two of us would creep down the stairs to see if Santa came.
When I close my eyes, I can hear Levi’s laughter, high and childlike as Mom sings a carol and Dad interjects with the wrong lyrics. He got rid of all our Christmas decorations after Levi died. They reminded him too much of my brother.
When I survey the house from the bottom stair, it is magical all right, but this magic has nothing to do with sugarplums, home cooking, and heartfelt gifts. The downstairs is just as it was when Bert and I first arrived. Only the bags of groceries and cleaning supplies we left in the kitchen show we were even here.
I shiver and wrap my robe tighter around me. It’s wholly inadequate against the icy dread taking root in my heart. I was so certain I could escape my past. Leave it behind me where it belongs.
Bert was right; we should have never come here. He gathers up our bags from the kitchen, scowling. “Get what you need, Kev. I’ll load up the car.”
When I just stare at him, he leaves our things in a heap by the door. He comes over to me, steps into my personal space, and lays a warm hand along my jaw.
“You’re freezing.” He sounds surprised by that. “I’ll start the heat in the Jeep. This will all look better from a distance, you’ll see.”
I nod woodenly. Bert is probably right. “I need something from the garage. I don’t care about the rest of it, but that’s where Levi…” If there’s anywhere in this house my brother remains, any happy memory, the garage is where I’ll find it.
“The sooner you get what you need, the sooner we can leave this wretched place for good.” Bert leans in for a kiss. “We’ll be fine.” He goes to load the car. I turn toward the garage, staring down the last place I want to go.
My feet are as heavy as lead as I approach the only memento I truly want. Not the ruined family photo in its shattered frame. Not the years of other pictures chronicling a lie about a happy family. The piece I take with me isn’t a picture full of lies about who we were. It’s the old toolset my brother got from our uncle. The one Levi used to teach me how to fix an engine.
The one Dad used to joke about being central to the two of us engaging in brotherly bonding. It’s still covered in the grease smears Mom would fuss over. She said all the dirt made us look like a pair of filthy little boys, even though Levi was too old to appreciate being called a child, and she expected me to push back and declare myself a girl under all the grime.
I never did, and I like to think a small part of her knew and saw. It might be a lie I tell myself, but I choose to believe some small part of her saw the real me in those moments of levity. Some part of my dad could appreciate seeing his two sons together. Some part of my brother didn’t see me as a pesky little sister, who he had some patriarchal duty to protect, but as his peer. His equal.
Our hours spent toiling away in this garage had nothing to do with my gender and everything to do with us working together to make something broken whole. Levi said the moment we restored a busted car to life was his favorite feeling in the world. Leaving here the first time let me fix the broken parts of myself. It made me whole in a way I never could have been if I stayed. Now, I wonder if he needed to leave as much as I did, if for different reasons. Bert is wrong that there isn’t anything still here for me. There is.
It’s the chance to let go of the past and take from it only the pieces that don’t hurt. The good memories, unsullied by expectations I never wanted.
Bert thinks we can just get in the car and drive away, but I know better. The house won’t let me leave. I know it in my bones.
I still get in Bert’s car with my brother’s toolbox. It won’t start. Bert curses and turns the key in the ignition. The engine sputters and grumbles and refuses to turn over.
“I told you it won’t let me leave,” I say.
“Nonsense! They must have done something at that cut-rate auto shop.”
“It’s not the car.” I get out.
Bert scowls at me. “What are you doing?”
“Proving my point. Try it now.”
He does. The engine purrs to life. “There, you see? It was just a weird hiccup. Get in, and we’ll take it somewhere else to be sure it’s nothing serious before we get on the highway.”
“It won’t work,” I say, but I get back in.
The lights on the dash blink on as the engine gutters. Splutters. Dies.
“This is madness.” Bert thumps the steering wheel.
“Maybe. Or maybe it’s ghosts. Or whatever power is resetting the house. Something here doesn’t want me to leave again. They don’t want me to be happy.”
I was right. This place will never let me leave. I want to curl up in a ball and howl at the unfairness of it all.
This house will never let me go. Unless it’s gone. I scramble upright, knowing with perfect clarity what I have to do. Now, before Bert tries to force the issue with his cool conviction that he always knows best. Sometimes he doesn’t. Sometimes I’m the one who knows what needs to be done. And sometimes, I’m the only one who can do it.
“Look, just get in and drive onto the road. I’ll figure something out to join you once you’re off the property,” I tell him.
Bert scowls. He looks like he wants to take charge, but if I let him, I’ll never slip the yoke my parents wanted to saddle me with. I’ll never shed the part of me my folks raised to be obedient and polite. Docile.
Bert grumbles something about pigheadedness, but there’s a fondness to his tone as he starts the car again. He rolls slowly to the end of the driveway, turns onto the road, and parks on the shoulder. The car idles with its engine purring as though it never had any trouble at all.
I square my shoulders and turn back toward the gaping maw of the house’s front door. I’m glad Bert didn’t put up a fuss. He doesn’t belong here. I don’t belong here. It’s possible some version of me did, once upon a time. No part of the version of me who came home belongs to this place any longer though. And it can’t hold any power over me that I don’t grant it.
Each step inside weighs on me, heavier than all the furniture and garbage we spent the past few days lugging outside. I try not to think about what I’m doing as I go back to the garage for the last time to find what I need.
I tune out the memories assailing me with every step. No laughter, no songs. No screaming fights or passive-aggressive jibes. It’s all so loud I can’t make out what they’re saying. A constant cacophony, so much noise my head is ready to split open like an overripe melon.
The pulsing ache of the ghosts lends urgency to my actions. They aren’t just holding me captive; they’ll destroy me if I let them. I don’t bother cleaning out all the ashes. I just scoop away enough to get a new fire laid.
This time, I leave the damaged photo frame where it lies. The kindling catches, tiny flames licking around the larger logs until they find purchase and spread.
I leave the door to the stove flung open wide, and I set the vent to let it take as much air as it requires to spread and grow. The flames dance. I can almost hear the crackling as a living thing giving thanks for the fuel and air. The fire chatters, but I can’t quite grasp its meaning. Is it a pleased purr or a greedy demand for more?
No matter, I’ll give it what it craves. That’s the only way to fight the icy cold clasping me in its iron grip. The house resets whenever the fire dies, so I’ll feed the flames until they burn away every speck of the ice holding me captive.
The splattering of the old kerosene from Levi’s camping gear falls all around me like fat drops of rain just before a storm. It reminds me of spring showers giving way to a flood. The way those first little flecks of moisture presage roaring sheets of rain. A deluge drumming on the roof and the ground and declaring nature’s wrath in a mighty torrent that obscures all other sounds.
So much rain that it scours the world and leaves it smelling of green growing things. The sort of storm that crackles in the air, and when you walk outside after, everything is scrubbed raw and ready for a clean start. That’s how the roaring in my ears seems to scream as I walk through the spreading fire. Every crackle of hungry flames devours the half-heard whispers of the dead still echoing in my head. Not for much longer. I am banishing them. Drowning them out. Burning them to ash.
Bert will notice what I’m doing soon. I wonder if he’ll come to get me or wait? That’s why I had to use the kerosene. I need to be sure the fire burns hot enough to melt the icy barrier around the property before he can do anything to stop it. Hot enough to leave me free to make a life with him far from here. Loud enough to drown out the voices that used to fill every silence.
I don’t look behind me. Just like the woodstove’s comforting wall of heat on wintry nights long past, the flames at my back warm me to the depths of my being one last time. There’s no room for cold in this conflagration.
Ash and sparks drift to the ground. The heat makes the air shimmer until I can almost imagine Levi by my side, watching over me one last time. The vaguest impression of his shape flickers in my periphery. And the hungry roaring fills my ears.
Sure enough, the gravel at the end of the driveway, just where it meets the road, crunches under my feet. I shed my robe there. The fire singed the edges, leaving smoldering patches along the hem. And I’m not cold anymore. I pick my way along the uneven shoulder to where Bert leans against the car, gaping slack-jawed at my handiwork.
“What did you do?” he asks. All traces of his earlier patronizing tone are gone for the moment.
“What I had to do; we can call the fire department when we get to an area with a cell signal.”
Bert shuts his mouth and looks between me and the burning house.
“Are you coming?” I ask as I pass him. I don’t hesitate or look back. There’s nothing left there for me.
I get in the driver’s seat. Bert scrambles into the passenger seat like he’s afraid I might leave him by the side of the road. He buckles up beside me without a word. And the ghosts? They’re not even a ringing in my ears anymore.
I put the car in gear, roll the windows down, and drive. We get far enough from the flames for their devouring roars to fade away. Peaceful silence shrouds the road, a natural stillness punctuated by the trill of birdsong and the steady hum of the Jeep’s engine taking us home.