The House

Flash Fiction

The House

Walking down the street from the corner grocery store. I’d made this trip hundreds of times over the twenty seven years we’ve lived here. However our kids were grown, they had their own places now. We don’t buy as much for just the two of us. The house was also a bit big for us now, but I was not ready to give it up.

As I got closer, I could see a woman on the sidewalk looking at our house. It wasn’t unique, or even well maintained. John and I did the basics but we were old enough to know what could get by as enough. I started to wonder if something was wrong!

I still couldn’t see anything amiss as I got to her, so I asked “Why are you looking at my house?”

Startled, she whipped around. She was much older than me. Suddenly I felt kind of bad for yelling at her. Then she spoke.

“I used to live here. It looks lovely! I haven’t been in Massachusetts since we moved long ago, I just wanted to see if it was still here.

“Oh gosh!” I said, “are you Mrs. Pepper?”

“Yes! How did you know?”

“When we bought it, the real estate guy called it the Pepper House. It sounded so cute we called it that for years!”

“So you must be a Taylor! We never got to meet you, we had to be in Nevada before the house was actually sold!”

“Well, come on in and see what we did with it!”

She was lovely, they had moved because their children were grown and gone. She was so delightful, I suddenly stopped being afraid of losing myself by losing our house. Memories count, but life goes on, she proved that to me.