Rebuilding

Lila brushed a finger against the rough wood of the attic door. She hadn’t been up here in months.

The yellowish paint was chipping, the wooden frame a little wobbly, and it was missing its door handle. She used to think it was so quirky, full of character. Now, she knew it was broken.

She took a breath, steeled herself before she pushed the door inward, perhaps with too much force. Bruce let out a yelp beside her as it smacked against the wall. Lila patted his head for reassurance. Silas always said he was a mouse stuck inside the body of an Alaskan Malamute.

Lila blinked into the dark cavern of the attic before the tears came. She had a job to do.

A few seconds later, she was blinking again in the sharp stab of a fluorescent work light. The attic hadn’t come with wiring; they had set up the work light as a temporary solution.

Maybe that was a blessing in disguise, she thought as she tapped her foot in the direction of an enormous tree trunk that had knocked three foot hole in the roof. At least it hadn’t started a fire.

The sky beyond the collapsed roof was still angry—all swirling gray clouds and gusts of cold air. The previous night had delivered one of the worst thunderstorms Lila could remember. She and Bruce had hunkered under a blanket by the fire the entire night. She hadn’t even gotten up when she heard the crash. She told herself at the time there wasn’t much she could do, made herself believe the lie.

The wooden flooring creaked ominously under Lila’s work boot while Bruce paced nervously outside the doorway. The tree hadn’t crashed through the flooring, which she took as a good sign since the flooring was older than her grandparents.

Then she remembered the boxes.

“No,” she whispered as she hastily rushed forward to lift a branch. She was met with broken glass and bits of soggy cardboard. Stray leaves and smaller branches scratched her face as she dug for the remnants of her marriage.

Shattered frames, the photographs inside warped and destroyed, bits of cloth from what she could only assume were Silas’ old clothes, a disheveled Cabbage Patch Kid Silas had bought for her at a thrift shop once because he said both of their eyes were the exact uncanny shade of hazel.

Lila sat back on her heels and felt as though she might become a permanent fixture there. Her mind and body felt so heavy, she was sure there was not enough strength in the world to lift her up again.

He was gone. Well and truly gone.

She waited for the anger or the tears or anything other than the deep rooted, heavy dread. But who could she rage at when the culprit was nature itself? No matter how long she screamed herself hoarse, the tree would still be here, crushing her memories. She could feel them escaping out the hole in the roof; his phrases that made her laugh the most, the startled sound he made every single time she jumped from behind a half-demolished wall to prank him, the way he held his toothbrush, they were all part of the wind now, too far away to catch.

How she wished to be intertwined with the wind, too.

Bruce let out a soft snuff from the doorway. He was still too fearful to enter the attic after his paw slipped into a hole in the floor a few days after they had moved in.

Lila looked at his scruffy black coat and realized she hadn’t bathed him in months. Silas used to bathe him. Bruce always behaved better for him. Every time Lila had tried, she had come out of the bathroom in a tizzy and covered in wet dog hair.

She had always thought of Bruce as more of Silas’ dog. Never hers. But now Bruce was the only thing in this world she had left of him, she realized as she turned back to the carnage.

She would take better care of him now; Silas wouldn’t want to see him this scruffy-looking. She’d bathe him after she dealt with the tree.

She blew all the air out of her lungs like she used to do before lifting the end of the heavy wooden beams they’d used for support in the living room ceiling. She leaned forward and let the momentum carry her up and up, until she was something resembling upright.

Their tools were still collecting dust on the second floor. She hadn’t been past the first floor of their house since Silas’ funeral. The upper floors had ceased to exist when he did.

Lila’s hand left an imprint in the dust on the bannister as she stepped off the final step. She had kept her eyes firmly glued to her feet on her way up, but now she allowed her eyes to roam.

The stairway to the attic (if you could call it that; there were only five or six) led to a squat rectangular hallway with four doors spaced evenly around the perimeter. The walls were still the yellowing beige of forty-year-old paint and she couldn’t be sure if the worn gray carpeting had lightened or darkened with age.

The door to her left was still wide open, and she thought the room inside looked like a time capsule. To a different realm, a different time, a different life.

She didn’t know if she could go in. It was too soon to do this. This room was one of the last things he’d ever seen. It was the butterfly effect that caused his death.

He was only supposed to be gone half an hour. He’d run to the hardware store to pick up another level. He was constantly losing them. Lila had always been convinced she’d look in a forgotten drawer one day and find about twenty levels all stacked neatly. Silas joked that the house was eating them.

He’d made the drive hundreds of times; she knew exactly what time he would be back. Only, she’d looked up in the middle of chopping carrots and realized he was ten minutes late. When the police came to her door to tell her about the crash, all she could think about was that she didn’t feel it when he had died. She’d always thought she would feel it in her soul when her soulmate left her forever. Wasn’t she supposed to know? Did that make her a bad wife?

Lila stuck her fists in her eyes now, trying to erase the memory. She couldn’t stand here reminiscing forever. It would rain again soon and the floors couldn’t take anymore moisture without collapsing.

She strode in before her mind could fully process the layout, grabbed the electric chainsaw, and marched back up the attic stairs. It was not her first time using power tools. She and Silas had worked together to refurbish their abandoned late 19th century home. They didn’t like to hire professionals if they could figure it out on their own. They told everyone it was to help cut down costs, but really Silas liked to work with his hands and she was a voracious learner.

“Imagine telling our children we built this entire place with our own two hands,” he used to crow every time they’d finished a piece of the house.

It was supposed to be their forever home.

The roar of the chainsaw severed that thought before it could go further. Bruce bolted down the stairs. Lila got to work.

Several hours later, Lila was surrounded by piles of branches and leaves that needed to be hauled outside. She cut the trunk into small enough chunks that she could use for firewood and set it aside. She made a temporary patch for the hole in the roof with an old tarp she found in the corner of the attic. It would hold off the rain for now.

She stood, sweaty and panting in the stark LED of the work light and analyzed the damage again. All but one of the boxes were demolished and for half a second she regretted moving all the memories of him up here. Then, she remembered the first breath of air she took when she went back downstairs, the way her muscles unwound because she knew there wasn’t a chance of accidentally looking at something of his or being reminded of him, and then ultimately reminded that she never said goodbye and she didn’t know if his soul tried to reach out to hers as he was leaving.

It was the right choice; she knew that inexplicably now. So. . .maybe now his clothing and tokens being gone would be good for her too? She bit her lip at the thought.

Lila’s fingers trembled as she opened the remaining box. The cardboard was flimsy with rainwater, but it seemed as though the contents were mostly intact. Inside, sat a single framed photograph of her and Silas taken on their hiking trip in the Mount Rainier National Park Their friend Sarah had taken it when they weren’t paying attention. Their foreheads were touching and secret smiles spread their lips. She didn’t even remember what they were talking about at the time, but it was her favorite photo of them. She knew it should be their wedding photo, but she loved the unorchestrated intimacy of this one more.

She knew now what was in the rest of the box—she’d stacked her favorite mementos in this one, the ones that were the last to be stored away. The hoodie she always stole out of his drawer, the one with the hole in the armpit, was right below the photograph. Next was the last bottle of his cologne nestled in the arms of the first stuffed animal he’d ever given her—an elephant with a heart at the tip of its trunk. She didn’t smell the cologne but she did rub her fingertip down the elephant’s trunk. She could feel her lips tilt upward, a foreign feeling to her now.

She noticed something beneath the elephant and froze when she picked it out of the box. It was a book, only she didn’t remember putting it in this box. The Art of Letting Go. Silas had given this to her when she had been spiraling out every day. They had just spent nearly all their savings on this house. She was second guessing their decision. It was Silas’ idea to distract her with the home renovations. He always told her that he knew from experience the good that keeping your hands busy could do.

Her hands had not been very busy lately.

Lila placed the book and the rest of the contents very carefully back into the box. She stood up and took a true deep breath; one she really hadn’t been able to do in months. There was a feeling taking root deep in her gut.

This was a sign from Silas.

It was silly, she knew, to think that Silas had somehow, from the great beyond, sent a tree trunk careening into their precious home, but, well, Silas was silly like that. He always pushed her to do better, be better, even if she resisted with all her might.

All this time, she had been resisting, and Silas was telling her to let go. It was okay to let go.

She looked at the pieces of the tree all scattered about the attic and let herself smile, really smile, for the first time since he died.

“Thank you,” she whispered to no one and anyone who was there.

She gently gathered the cardboard box in her arms and brought it back downstairs to the first floor. She set it on the kitchen table before turning around to look at Bruce, who tilted his head at her from the safety of his dog bed.

“Now,” she said, with hands on her hips and a mouth adjusting to smiling again, “I think we both need a bath.”