Page 4 of The House on Forgotten Hill

Divorce.

Caring for my mother day in and day out as her health declined.

There had always been something that needed my attention.

Now there was nothing.

No husband waiting at home.

No mother who needed groceries picked up or prescriptions collected.

And as for my job as the head secretary at a used car sales company, it had never brought me joy. I’d stayed because it paid the bills and gave me a routine, and I liked routines.

Now, I had options I’d never had before. I thought about the town I’d lived in for the past twenty years, and even though I’d spent more time there than anywhere else, it still felt like my mother’s town, not mine.

But where could I go?

I had no idea.

A couple months after the funeral, I resigned from my job and placed my mother’s house on the market, which surprised family and friends who thought I was being a bit hasty, making decisions I might regret later.

“You’re grieving,” my aunt had said. “Why don’t you put off any major decisions for a while?”

She may have been right, but I had spent too many years feeling as though some part of me was missing.

It was time for me to find it.

The house sold faster than expected. I packed what I wanted to take with me, placed the rest in storage, and decided to move back to the town I had lived in before my father died.

I rented a furnished one-bedroom vacation rental near the edge of town. It was small but nicer than anything I’d ever lived in before, with modern furniture, floor-to-ceiling windows, and a balcony overlooking a small lake.

I didn’t know what would come next in my life, but my plan was to stay there temporarily while I looked for a modest home to buy.

As for the town, it had been eighteen years since I’d been back, having returned only once when I was fourteen with my mom to pick up a few things she’d left with a friend. The grocery store where my mother used to shop had become a pharmacy. The old movie theater had been renovated and reopened, and the park where my father used to push me on the swings was still there. So was the ice cream shop where he bought me chocolate cones on hot summer afternoons.

Even though I’d been gone for so long, it was familiar, and I felt closer to my father than I had in a long time.

A couple weeks after my return, I worked up enough courage to drive by our old house for the first time. As I wound up the road, it curved upward through an older neighborhood filled with mature trees and many homes that sat far back from the street.

As a child, I had thought the hill was enormous.

Driving it as an adult, I realized it was little more than a gentle incline.

Forgotten Hill.

That wasn’t its name, but that’s the name I gave it because that’s what it felt like. So much of my life there had been forgotten. Or perhaps buried was a better word.

It wasn’t long before I began driving past my childhood home a couple times a week, just staring at it and reminiscing.

The house stood near the top of the hill and was partially hidden behind an oak tree that had grown wider in the years since I had last seen it. The exterior was a different color now. The shutters had been replaced, and someone had removed the wooden swing my father built in the backyard.

But it was still the same house.

My house.

3

The first time I drove past my childhood home, I didn’t even slow down.