The old house, with its wildly overgrown garden, was silent, secretive.
I returned at dusk, key heavy in my palm, because the town had finally voted to sell it. They said it was safer emptied, safer burned, safer forgotten. They said it unanimously, a chorus of certainty that hummed through the council hall.
Inside, dust floated like held breath. The wallpaper remembered my height at seven, my brother’s at ten, the pencil marks measuring years we never reached. The house knew us. It knew the sound of soup simmering, the radio’s static prayers, the night the stairs learned to creak in warning.
I followed the hallway to the back room where the floor dipped, where secrets were supposed to rot. Instead, the garden pressed its green face to the windows, leaves tapping, roots shouldering brick. The house had not been silent. It had been listening.
In the cupboard beneath the stairs, I found the ledger: names, dates, small mercies written in my mother’s careful hand. She had sheltered people here, fed them, let the house hold their fear until it softened. The walls had learned kindness.
Outside, the first match flared. I stepped onto the porch and spoke to the crowd. I read the names aloud. I told them what the house had done. Wind carried the words, leaves rattled agreement.
When the match fell, it died in damp soil. The crowd shifted. Someone clapped. Another nodded. They voted again. This time, the garden breathed. The house stood. I locked the door and left, carrying silence that was no longer secretive.
By morning, the town woke gentler, finding weeds trimmed themselves, fears loosened, and a history kept standing, unanimously agreeing that some shelters deserve patience, names, and doors left unlocked for those still traveling, hungry, hopeful, tired, homeward, quietly, together.
FOWC With Fandango — Unanimously – Facts, Fictions & Fantasies
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