by Lauren Kardos

How’s that for a howdy, new owner of our home?

Earl told me, Ruth, you’re just giving the mice an excuse to nest in the walls. But Earl’s never known how to mix business and pleasure. We’re swearing off other major renovations in our lifetime, so best of luck, you brave soul(s). You’ve found this note, so it’s sayonara for our new-to-us mirrored bar against basement’s western wall. Have you finally scraped away the scowling owl wallpaper the Greenlings tacked up the century prior? Maybe you’ve torn down the rotting stables out back or found a carpenter to mend the gouge Earl kicked in the stair banister one night, back when our marriage wobbled like a newborn filly.

If I may be so bold, can I request one thing?

Earl promised a dream house, vowed at the courthouse that we’d stay all our days and build a family. The former, we’ve neatly checked off, dotted our i’s and crossed our t’s. This year I’m closer to 50 than 40, and I must be realistic. I love you to Pluto and beyond, Earl says, in his scratchy morning voice behind the paper at breakfast, and I love him back, even though the one thing he mixes up constantly is his platitudes. But we don’t talk about how the hallways echo with pattering footsteps untrodden. We’ve stopped wondering what the room we’ve made the den might one day cradle.

Here I am writing a novel, and you’re probably thinking, get to the point, Ruth. Behind the basement wall, you’ll have found the root cellar, which we’re leaving unfinished and cobwebby, the floor all packed earth. If you’re still reading, my request is simple: do not dig. Cement over it, build a bathroom with those newfangled waterfall showers, pipes running from the ceiling. That’s where I buried the lives we could’ve had. Ruined lingerie, dime-sized clots I stopped mentioning to Earl though our union grew to steady, reliable mare-dom.

Where are we now? I don’t know what I believe. But let those remnants rest, undisturbed, in this home where they were loved. I’m not above a haunting (if the afterlife exists).

Warmly,

Ruth

Image by Maria Orlova via Pexels