Twenty years after losing his wife and daughters, I thought I was finally ready to open the rooms that grief had kept frozen in time. I was wrong. Some houses do not give up their secrets quietly.
The house felt heavier than usual that morning, like it knew something I didn't. Twenty years of silence had settled into the walls, into the wood, into the air I breathed.
I stood in the kitchen, staring at a stack of empty boxes my sons had brought in the night before.
"Dad, you sure you want to start with the girls' room?" Adam asked, leaning against the doorway with two coffee mugs in his hands.
"No," I admitted. "But if I don't start there, I'll never start at all."
Ethan walked in behind him, sleeves already rolled up.
"We'll do it together," he said. "All three of us. You don't have to open that door alone."
"If I don't start there, I'll never start at all."
I took the coffee from Adam and tried to smile.
"You boys grew up too fast. When did you get taller than me?"
"Around the same time you stopped eating real food," Ethan teased. "Frozen dinners don't count, Dad."
The doorbell cut through the quiet, sharp and unwelcome. I already knew who it was before I opened it.
Diane stood on the porch, holding a casserole dish like she always did, her smile too soft, her eyes too watchful.
"I came to help," she said. "I couldn't let you pack up Laura's things without me."
"I came to help."
"You didn't have to drive all this way, Diane."
"Of course I did. She was my sister. These are her things too."
Adam glanced at me from the hallway, his jaw tight. He never warmed to her, not even as a child.
"Aunt Diane," he said flatly. "Didn't expect you."
"Sweetheart, I've been part of this family for twenty years. Where else would I be?"
I stepped aside and let her in, because I always did. Because saying no to Diane was a battle I lost decades ago.
