The New House

My eyes ached but I didn’t let myself look down the perpendicular sidewalk as we passed Hobart St. I was away from the city for a year, but I still knew where it was. I kept my eyes trained on the road, my brother too aware in the driver’s seat next to me.

I couldn’t let him see me look toward Aaron’s house. So somehow, I didn’t even glance in that direction. Aaron didn’t live there anymore, but that didn’t matter. Tim would still know.

Several seconds passed, and I deliberately let a car going in the opposite direction catch my eye. Several more seconds passed, and I turned up the radio as we slowed to a stop at a red light. I made sure those two pauses were different lengths of time.

I watched the green light adjacent to us finally click to yellow, then red, and tried to nod at the light in front of us the exact moment it changed to green. I was almost perfect.

We turned left and I watched a woman walking her golden retriever down the sidewalk.

“Huh, that looked like Red,” I made myself say, comparing the dog to one we’d had in childhood. Tim’s eyes flicked in that direction, but he said nothing in reply.

Every second we were on the road seemed to tick audibly inside me. It was delayed, slow like a heartbeat, but sharper. Clearer. A staccato note, a quick reverberation.

I thought I was in the clear. I thought I had convinced Tim of my indifference.

“You’re trying too hard.”

Some cresting wave I had not seen building crashed into me, washing away the ticking of the clock.

“What are you talking about?”

He snorted. “Becca, you don’t have to pretend you’re okay.”

The wave settled into me, pooling under my collar bones. It began to freeze over. Something about the rarity of him using my name, and in that condescending way, made my usually fiery temper harden. I willed it to continue. Let me be cold, let me be ice. Let the frozen pond be so thick as to be unbreakable.

“I’m not talking about it. Don’t start.” Because if I started, the ice would break. The water would pull me under, and I couldn’t be underwater today. Tim knew that.

And maybe that’s why he said it. Maybe he knew me better than I realized, that my stubbornness would immediately rise up to contradict him. Because I did have to pretend. I had to be okay for this.

We pulled into the driveway in silence. The clunk of the car doors was distant in my absent mind, but the yell from inside the house cleared the haze that had settled over that frozen pond. I knew that voice.

Just for a flash, I saw the sound of the car doors from her point of view.

I could feel the excitement, the anticipation she had felt all day waiting for someone, wondering when they would arrive. When it was someone you loved, that sound meant everything. That sound was the beginning.

A rosy cheeked child appeared in the doorway, face full of awe. I bent down to one knee and threw open my arms. Her mother grinned at us as she appeared, opening the door wide.

The three-year-old screeched, “It’s Auntie Becca!” She ran to me, and the frozen pond thawed. She hugged me, and the water disappeared altogether.

This town had been stolen from me. It was an absolute truth, as permanent as the sun. My heart began knitting together as I looked over my niece’s shoulder at my sister’s broad smile. I was ready to steal it back.