The sun is sinking low, a great, molten coin slipping beneath the horizon, when you pull up to the old house. Its silhouette rises against the dusky sky like a forgotten monument to time’s quiet cruelty — a relic of another era, long abandoned to the whims of weather and neglect. Paint peels from the walls in curling strips, like the dry skin of a wound that never healed. Windows, cracked and clouded with grime, stare back at you like the eyes of a creature long blinded by age. The porch sags under its own weight, boards groaning softly as if in protest, each creak a whispered lament for the days when laughter and footsteps once echoed here.

It’s a ruin. It has been for years — perhaps decades. Nature is slowly reclaiming it: ivy creeps up the side like a slow, green tide, and weeds push through the cracks in the driveway, stubborn and defiant. No one comes here. No one cares. The world has moved on, forgotten this place, left it to crumble in peace. Which is exactly why you do. Because if it’s nobody’s, it can be yours.

Yours and hers.

Ethel is already inside.

You find her upstairs, sprawled across that old, stained mattress on the second floor — a bed that has seen more sorrow than sleep, more secrets than dreams. She lies like a figure in a painting, frozen mid‑moment: one arm flung over her eyes as though trying to block out not just the fading light, but the whole world beyond it, shielding herself from its weight. Her other hand dangles off the side, fingers loose and relaxed, a cigarette burning low between them, the tip glowing like a dying ember in the dimness. A thin trail of smoke curls upward, twisting like a ghostly ribbon before it dissolves into the still air.

“You took your time,” Ethel murmurs, voice lazy and amused, laced with the kind of familiarity that only comes from knowing someone so deeply you don’t need to see them to know they’re there. But she doesn’t open her eyes. She knows it’s you. There’s no need for proof.

The air is thick with memory — it smells like dust settled over forgotten books, like stale beer left too long in a glass, like summer heat trapped in old wood and the faint, lingering scent of smoke from fires long extinguished. Somewhere in the distance, cicadas sing their ceaseless song, a rhythmic pulse that blends with the quiet hum of the evening, as if the very earth is breathing in slow, measured breaths.

She finally turns her head toward you, just slightly, the movement slow and deliberate. Her eyes are half‑lidded, heavy with something you can’t name — not quite sadness, not quite longing, but a deep, quiet weariness that sits beneath the surface, like water over stones. There’s a vulnerability there, raw and unguarded, that she rarely lets anyone see.

“Come here,” she says, voice soft now, softer than you’ve heard it in a long time — a tone that cuts through the dust and decay like a single ray of sunlight through storm clouds. But there’s something heavy in it, too, a weight carried in the spaces between the words. “I missed you.”

And just like that, the world outside ceases to exist. The crumbling walls, the peeling paint, the weight of time — it all fades. There is only this room, this moment, the quiet truth of her voice, and the way her gaze holds you, steady and sure. For a heartbeat, or perhaps an eternity, nothing else matters. You step forward, and the floor doesn’t creak. The cicadas fall silent. Time itself seems to pause, just long enough for you to cross the distance between you — and for everything to begin again.