The House Between Seasons

The house stood at the edge of the woods, exactly where memory left it — too quiet, too still, caught between frost and thaw like it had forgotten how to move forward.

Elena hadn’t stepped foot there in fifteen years.

Not since the accident.

She parked her rental car at the edge of the dirt path, the tires crunching against half-melted ice and soft mud. The air smelled like thawing pine, cold earth, and something older — like grief that never fully dried.

The house hadn’t changed. The windows still blinked like tired eyes, the shingles peeled like sunburnt skin. But it was the porch that struck her — tilted slightly left, like it remembered how her father used to sit there every evening, counting the birds aloud while her mother gardened below.

She hesitated, hand brushing the worn wood of the doorframe.

It opened with a sigh.

Inside, everything remained suspended. Furniture in place. A sweater still tossed over the arm of the sofa. Mugs on the shelf, each chipped in a way she knew by heart. Even the smell — lavender soap and firewood — lingered like it had waited for her return.

Elena had spent years trying to forget this place.

But forgetting never worked — not really. It only buried things, and buried things had a way of growing roots.

She wandered the rooms like a ghost, fingers grazing corners, eyes tracing the wallpaper she once tried to peel as a child. Each creak in the floorboard was a memory echoing back.

Her bedroom still had the faded star stickers on the ceiling. She had once believed they’d guide her dreams.

She sat on the edge of the bed and let herself remember — not just the tragedy, but the before.

The laughter echoing down the stairs.

The way her brother used to race her to the mailbox.

The last time they were all together — her, him, and their parents — wrapped in blankets, sipping cocoa as the snow fell like feathers outside.

She had been thirteen.

He had been ten.

The ice had been thin.

And the lake had not forgiven them.

Elena closed her eyes and let the ache come. Not just for him — but for who she had been. Who she might have become, had the winter not broken open like a wound that never closed.

For years, she had tried to rewrite that day.

If only I’d grabbed his hand faster.

If only we hadn’t gone out on the ice.

If only I had shouted louder.

But grief doesn’t answer “if only.”

It just waits — like the house — for the moment you’re ready to return.

She stood and made her way to the attic.

It had always been her brother’s secret spot. He’d climb up there with a flashlight, a book, and a dozen wild ideas about time travel, hidden maps, and creatures made of smoke. She used to tease him — “You’ll turn into a bat if you stay up there too long.” He’d grin and say, “Maybe I already did.”

The attic door groaned open. Dust hung thick in the air, golden in the light. And there, against the far wall, was the box.

Labeled in his scrawling handwriting:

“For the End of Winter”

Elena’s breath caught.

She knelt slowly, trembling fingers lifting the lid.

Inside: a comic book he had started drawing — superheroes with mismatched socks and silly capes. A slingshot. A letter addressed to future Elena. And a photo — the last one they took together, arms flung around each other, both of them grinning, snowflakes caught in their hair.

She opened the letter.

"If you’re reading this, it means winter lasted longer than we thought. That’s okay. I always knew you’d come back. You were the brave one. You just forgot for a while. But you remembered. And that means I’m not lost. Not really. You can let go now — not of me, but of the cold."

Tears fell silently.

She didn’t try to stop them.

Later, Elena sat on the porch. The sky had turned soft — like twilight was giving the world a second chance. She could hear the birds again. Somewhere, water trickled — the lake, perhaps, melting at last.

She didn’t know if she’d stay. Maybe she didn’t need to.

Maybe it was enough to have returned. To remember. To open the door that grief had sealed shut and find, not just loss, but love waiting inside it.

Elena stood, looked back at the house between seasons, and whispered, “Thank you.”

And as she walked away, spring began to bloom in her footprints.