Page 2 of The House on Forgotten Hill

I nodded, and she placed a plate in front of me and sat across the table while I ate. Neither of us said much, but I remember feeling hopeful for the first time in months.

My mother began leaving the house again after that. She went grocery shopping. She answered the phone when it rang. She even returned to work part-time and started hanging around with her friends again.

But looking back now, I can admit she was never the same after he died.

The woman who had once filled the house with music stopped turning on the radio. She stopped laughing. It was as if she’d stopped expecting anything more from life.

The first major decision she made after my father’s death was to sell our house, even though I begged for us to stay. The house was the only home I had ever known. It was where my father had taught me to ride a bicycle in the driveway. Where he’d built a wooden swing beneath the large oak tree in the backyard. Where the three of us had eaten pancakes every Sunday morning and played cards at the dining room table when storms knocked out the electricity.

I liked walking past my father’s office and picturing him sitting behind his desk or opening the hall closet and catching the faint scent of the coat he used to wear. Sometimes when I stood in the kitchen, I remembered the way he danced whenever my mother played one of her favorite songs.

Every room held a memory.

Wonderful memories that comforted me but caused pain for my mother.

“It hurts too much to stay here,” she told me. “I hope you understand.”

I didn’t, but she listed the house anyway.

Several weeks later, it sold, and we packed our lives into cardboard boxes and moved several states away to live near my mother’s sister. I’ll never forget watching our old house disappear through the rear window of the car until the road curved and there was nothing left to see.

We moved into a modest house a few blocks from my aunt’s house, and I’ve lived in the same state ever since. There were times when I considered leaving, and in college, I almost did. Then, at the age of twenty-two, I met Adrian Nightingale. He was charming and attentive, and he swept into my life so fast, I didn’t have time to consider whether I wanted him there.

Within six months, we were engaged.

Three months later, we were married.

As charming and attentive as Adrian was to me the first year we were together, it wasn’t long before his interest switched from me to someone else, another girl I knew from school. Less than a year of marriage, we divorced.

There was no sentimental reason behind the decision to keep his last name. By then, I had become accustomed to being Olivia Nightingale, and returning to Caraway felt like taking a step backward instead of a step forward.

So, I didn’t.

Sitting at my mother’s table now, with a cup of coffee in my hand, I think about how much different the house feels without her in it.

Rain streaked the windows, just like it had the night my father died.

It had also rained the last time I spoke to my mother before her death.

By then, she had been in the hospital for almost two weeks. Her doctors had warned me that the end was near. Still, it was hard for me to accept. In the years since my father’s death, my mother had seemed stronger than any woman I’d ever known. Even when she grew frail, some part of me expected her to recover.

On the final night of her life, I sat beside her bed, holding her hand while the machines surrounding her hummed and beeped.

For most of the evening, she’d said little, offering a few words of encouragement and then telling me she loved me.

Just before midnight, her eyes opened.

“Olivia,” she whispered.

I leaned in. “I’m here.”

She tried to speak again, but the words were too faint for me to understand.

“What is it, Mom?”

Her fingers tightened around mine. “Come closer.”

I stood and bent over the bed until my ear was only inches from her mouth.