Burying Ghosts.

Kanna drew an impossibly deep breath as she drove down the winding drive through the overgrown brush and trees that were scratching their names in her airport rent-a-car. She could already hear the neglected engine of her father’s rotting chevy choking its way down the long-abandoned road in her memory. She exhaled a painful breath as she approached her destination. The driveway before her was cracked and beveled like an abandoned eggshell. She pulled closer to the garage door. The paint that was peeling from aged wood was piling like leaves in the fall at the base of the door that was so weather worn that it no longer sat solidly on the concrete but left large gaps as tiny doors for the mice to enter their undisturbed kingdom.

She pulled the large manila envelope from her backpack on the passenger seat. Her name was written in deep black ink on the front with the logo in the upper left-hand corner from the Benson Harrison Haddock & Wilson law firm. She pulled a smaller envelope from inside and shook the key inside it into her hand.  The post mark was from two years ago. The paperwork inside included the will, the deed and receipt for the last two years’ worth of back taxes on the property. She kept asking herself why she had come. She didn’t feel like she could sell the property until she had seen it once again. There was no other way to leave it behind her. Or she would always wonder. So, she had flown from two thousand miles away to face her fears.  

She pushed open the driver’s side door with some force in a moment of determination. She walked quickly toward the front door, but her steps became slower as she approached it. Her hands shook as she placed the key in the lock and turned it. The scream that the aged hinges made as it swung into the hallway echoed in her mind and triggered a memory and sped up her breathing. The door opened before her.  Even from this place on the stoop, she could see the sunlight streaming into the tiny hallway from the kitchen window. Just step inside, she told herself.

Her steps were slow on the color faded tile. Kanna dragged her finger through the dust resting undisturbed on the table in the hallway that held a solitary lamp. She didn’t bother to turn on any lights. She could’ve made her way through this home blindfolded. Nothing had changed in twenty-two years since she had been taken from here by Officer Lepetree. The sun was starting to rise outside and was sneaking noiselessly through the slats in the blinds that hung on the rain-stained windows and was leaving ladders of light on the weight-pressed carpet.

She was only a few feet in but was doubting her ability to move forward. The memories were thick around her like the cobwebs that lined the walls. She didn’t know why her mom had kept this home after all these years or why she had left it to her when she knew how much Kanna had hated it. She put the back of her right hand to her mouth. She felt like she was going to be sick. She could still hear the sound his hand had made when he slapped her.  God, give me courage, she prayed.

She turned left into the kitchen. The oversized fork still hung on the wall next to the stove. The fridge had been emptied and unplugged and the door was open showing the yellowing shelves like unbrushed teeth. She pulled open the cupboard beneath the sink. She knelt in front of it to see if it was still there. She reached a single finger and touched it on the back wall in the upper left-hand corner– the flower she had carved in the soft wood of the cupboard while she was hiding from him. She had stayed hidden in there for hours until he had stumbled out of the front door finally drunk and disinterested in being home. Kanna didn’t know if he had even tried to find her that night or if he was relieved, she was quiet.

She went through the kitchen and into the library. Most of the shelves were empty with a few exceptions. It was still here. Her favorite book from when she was small: The Poky Little Puppy. Her grandmother had given it to her, and it still had her name written on the front of it in her best five-year-old cursive.  Her mother must have left it here for her. What other treasures had she left?

Kanna almost ran up the rickety steps that groaned under her weight. She stepped over the threshold into her parents’ old room. It looked different barren of Mom’s old-fashioned bed frame and hand-me-down dresser. The window was slightly open as she always kept it for the evening breeze. The wood beneath it was twisted with the weather that had seeped in and warped the floorboards. If she remembered right, there was a place. She went to the side of the room that used to be beside the dresser. She tapped her foot on several of the boards until she found the place. One of the boards gave way beneath her tennis shoe and popped up at the opposite end.   Mom’s secret hiding place that she had once shown Kanna. She pulled up the board. And there it was. Wrapped in a towel and enclosed in a sealed container that popped a little as she opened the lid. She pulled it to her chest and wept. She touched the surface of the worn family bible. She could picture it in her mother’s hands. The pages were soft with age and inside the front cover was her grandmother’s handwriting and after she had passed it on, her mother’s handwriting. A piece of ribbon was tucked into Revelations. Chapter 21. Verse 4 was always her favorite: And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain; for the former things are passed away.

This was her inheritance. Even with all that had happened to her, Kanna’s mom had given her a belief in God. An understanding that hope is always a beautiful thing. Faith that people are good deep down. She never gave up on anyone. And she knew that one day God would stand with her and wipe away all the hard things and only good would remain.

Kanna could bury her ghosts now. And move on. She would leave this haunted house behind her now with all its bad dreams. Someone could tear it down and make a happy family in the magic of the trees.