Hammond House

I didn't expect to inherit anything, least of all this.

The lawyer's letter said "Hammond House" which felt like a contradiction until I stood before it. Five bedrooms, three and a half baths, more house than I'd ever lived in, wrapped in gingerbread trim and painted ladies' colors that had faded to ghosts of themselves. The front yard sprawls wider than it should, dominated by an old tree whose bristles—I can't call them branches, they're too wild, too reaching—scrape and tap against one of the upstairs bedroom windows like they're asking to be let in.

I walked through on that first day with the keys heavy in my pocket, opening doors to rooms that smelled of must and memory. Five bedrooms. I counted them twice. Tried to imagine who needed this much space, this many doors to close, this many windows to look out of and see different views of the same property.

The kitchens confused me most. Two of them. The first is where you'd expect—off the main hall, dated but functional, with counters that have seen decades of meals. But the second kitchen, tucked away like an afterthought or a secret, feels different. Smaller. More intimate. I almost missed it entirely on my first pass through.

It was only when I found the basement stairs that things started to feel strange. Old stone, the kind that stays cold even in summer, walls that predate the house above them. I descended into that chill and found myself in a space that felt older than it had any right to be. And there, around the corner from the second kitchen's lower access, behind a door I nearly mistook for a pantry: a library.

A hidden library.

Books floor to ceiling, their spines cracked and faded, titles in languages I recognized and some I didn't. Some of the books, journals with dates written in them that dated back two hundred to three hundred years or so stacked the corners further from the door leading into the hidden nook. I wondered gently about the people who had written these journals as my fingers brushed along the spine of the first few at the top with dates gently pressed into the spine with old ink. A reading chair worn smooth in the seat. A lamp that still worked when I tried it. Someone had spent time here, serious time, in this stone-cold room beneath the house. Someone had wanted this space hidden, or at least tucked away where casual visitors wouldn't stumble upon it.

I've been sleeping in the bedroom with the tree at the window. The bed was stripped when I got here, I made the bed up nicely using forgotten linen I found in the closet in the upstairs hall, white cotton, itchy but it'll have to do until I get myself to the local Target fifteen or so minutes up the street. The bristles from the tree in the front yard tap a rhythm against the glass at night—not menacing, just persistent, like a reminder that the house extends beyond its walls into the yard, into the thicket of trees that crowds the back of the property.

I followed those trees yesterday, pushing through underbrush that grabbed at my jeans, until I found what I was looking for: the riverbed. The riverbed was the edge of the property, beyond that was land that belonged to the state.

The water runs clear and cold, and I stood there watching fish move upstream against the current, their bodies silver flashes of determined effort. The sound of it, that constant rushing whisper, made me understand why someone built a house within earshot. Why they'd want to wake up knowing that sound was there, that motion, that life pushing forward.

It was from the attic window that I spotted the treehouse.

I'd been up there sorting through boxes, sneezing at dust, when I looked out and saw it: a forgotten platform in the tree behind the house, weathered boards gone gray, empty and undisturbed. Neglected. I wouldn't have known it existed if I hadn't been standing in exactly that spot, looking out at exactly that angle. From the ground, from any of the bedroom windows, it's invisible—hidden by branches and time and lack of attention.

I haven't climbed up to it yet. Part of me wants to leave it there, untouched, a secret the house is keeping even from itself. But I know eventually I'll call my brother to come over and we'd eventually make our way out there with a ladder, test the boards, see what's left of whatever childhood or dream built that small house in the sky. I had always wanted a treehouse, but my brother and I grew up deep in the downtown district of West Naadance where I lived for most of my childhood in a one-bedroom apartment with my older brothers.

This place is mine now, the lawyer said. All of it. The rooms I haven't furnished, the library I'm still cataloging, the second kitchen I don't know what to do with, the treehouse I haven't visited, the river I can hear from the back porch when the wind is right.

I didn't expect to inherit anything.

But now I'm here, and the house is teaching me its rooms one at a time, its secrets in the order it chooses to reveal them. I have time. Five bedrooms' worth of time. A whole hidden library's worth of time.

I'm learning to listen to what the bristles tap against the window. I think they're saying: Welcome home.