Echoes of Memories

Prompt: All We Need | Word Count: 500 Words Exactly | Genre: Fiction
Warning: None
Due: November 6, 2019

Cold seeps under the space below the door, through the double-paned windows and into the house. It seeps into my bones. Settles in my heart and takes root.

The house is empty. No furniture graces the rooms. No artwork on the walls. No throw rugs on the hardwood floors or fire in the hearth. Nothing to call this house a home. All trace of our life together is gone. Packed up and taken away by the two grown daughters of my now deceased love.

God, how I loved Bobby. We were lovers for more than twenty years and though we never married, we lived together as man and wife for the last thirteen.

It was difficult in the beginning, when the girls were resentful teenagers, angry and rebellious and hurtful, as teenaged girls can be. But over the years they had grown up and matured. They had married and had children of their own. Children who called me Nana, even though I wasn’t able to have children of my own. I thought I had become an integral part of this family. Together, we had all we needed.

At least, that’s what I thought, up until I learned that he'd never bothered to add me to his will. When he died the house and all its belongings had gone to his daughters. He had left me nothing. And the girls, whom I thought had come to love me, had wasted no time in selling the house and everything inside.

They hadn't even given me an opportunity to buy it from them, nor any of our shared possessions. Instead, they’d encouraged me to go away to grieve. Take all the time you need, Maggie, they’d said, all solicitude and compassion. And while I was gone they’d come in and stolen away my life.

It’s sad, but fortunate that I always suspected this day would come. I kept the house I’d had when we first met, currently rented, but soon to be vacant and available to me again. Bobby may not have provided directly for me, but he did teach me how to invest wisely, and my savings have grown exponentially over the years. Last year I even bought an art studio near my old place, and moved my supplies and most of my favorite possessions there. I’ve even begun teaching and renting space to other artists, and I have a circle of friends that meet regularly.

Bobby's house now echoes with twenty years of memories, but I will take those memories with me. The life I had here is gone; the love I shared with this family now scattered in Bobby's ashes around the trees of his property. The only thing left for me here is the cold that has seeped into my bones and into my heart.

But as I step outside and close the door behind me, the day is warm and the sun is shining. I am three years shy of sixty, and there is a whole world awaiting me.