Miranda Gaskin

Oak Hill

On a brisk November morning I had stood at my father’s grave for the first time in ten years. It was also the first time I stepped foot on my family’s estate, Oak Hill. My father was the only person that called me by my first name, Jessabelle, when everyone else just called me Elle. It was unseasonably cold that day, my breath wafted around me like pipe smoke. The sun shone through a lens of low clouds and occasionally bounced off the granite tombstones in a kaleidoscopic dance. It was quiet, somber, and lonely, but the way the birds sang their melancholy tune was beautiful in its own way and it helped put my mind at ease.