The door stayed shut.
He looked at the brass handle, then at the lock, then at the front window, as if the house itself had suddenly become disloyal.
I was parked across the road in a hired truck with my hands folded in my lap.
My own key was there too, resting against my palm, though it opened nothing now.
For the first time in weeks, that felt like freedom rather than loss.
Three weeks earlier, the house had still been mine in every visible way.
Frank’s armchair sat by the window, angled towards the garden because he used to say the birds were better than anything on television.
The kettle with the cracked lid still clicked too loudly after boiling.
A faded tea towel hung over the oven handle.
In the utility cupboard, pencil marks climbed the inside wall, each one labelled by year, each one proving Daniel had once been a boy who ran through that hallway with muddy shoes and jam on his sleeve.
