36

“Are you sure you want to take that thing with you?” I asked my grandmother as the movers lifted the clock from the wall. Part of me secretly hoped they'd drop it.

“Of course!” she frowned. “It was a wedding gift.”

“From who?” I asked, sealing another box before straightening up. “A vengeful ex? A witch one of you two pissed off? Because that thing isn't a gift, Granny. It's a curse.”

And I believed that, now more than ever after yet another sleepless night spent cursing medieval monks and William Clement. Yes, I knew exactly who was responsible for chiming pendulum clocks. That's the sort of thing you find yourself researching while clenching your jaw as one booms in your ear every half hour throughout the night.

I watched the movers carry it towards the truck, my glare following them until it caught on the front door. And then, I smiled. The chip in my front tooth had faded over the years, but I remembered exactly how I'd got it.

“It was from my mom,” my grandmother called after the movers. “It's a lovely clock, be careful!”

I hummed noncommittally as she announced she was putting the kettle on. After requesting a cup of tea, I wandered over to the door. I must have been ten.

My older sister and I had come up with the sort of idea only children at the tail end of an impossibly long summer holiday could have: we were going to film a music video. I'd been utterly convinced at the time, and for a good three years afterwards, that she'd written the song herself. That my sister was a musical genius. I've long since apologised to t.A.T.u.

"All the Things She Said," she sang as I dramatically sprinted through my grandparents' dining room... and straight into the front door.

I ran my hand over the wood at the height I guessed my ten-year-old self would have been. (Turns out, not much lower than it is now.) Sure enough, there it was. The matching chip.

My hand fell to my side as I looked towards the lounge. It seemed smaller without the impressive leather suite that had filled it just hours earlier. The suite where I cried as my mom told me she was pregnant - something I’m still teased about to this day. Who could blame me? I’d been the baby of the family for twelve years. Going from that to the middle child was a shock to the system.

Except… here. Here, I’d always been their baby.

I swallowed the lump in my throat as I waved the movers back inside.

I closed the front door behind them. The thud echoed through the empty house, stirring memories of Christmas lunches around this table. It was strange to realise I’d now spent more Christmases away from this house than in it, and yet I could still see every one of them. Fighting with my cousins over the last roast potato, smelling like some ungodly combination of whatever body products I’d unwrapped that morning. Bubblegum body wash and tutti frutti shampoo? Why not? It was Christmas. Best believe I was going to use every present within an hour of opening it.

At some point, Christmas lunches had turned into farewell lunches. An annual meal marking not the birth of Christ, but me flying back across oceans.

I stopped where the staircase to the garage met the landing. I’d said so many goodbyes here. Right in this spot. That had become a tradition in its own right. Clinging to my grandmother, her tiny shoulders shuddering beneath my embrace.

“It’s not goodbye,” I’d always tell her, my own ragged breaths fighting the words. “It’s a see you next time.” She’d nod, gasping out quiet I knows.

Once we heard the boot of my uncle’s car slam shut, I’d pull away just enough to look into her swimming eyes and smile. I’d read so many books where characters were described as forcing a smile. Hell, I worked in hospitality; smiling through anything was practically a requirement on my CV. But in those moments, forcing seemed too gentle a word.

Still, I smiled. I told her I loved her. That I’d miss her, so, so much, but that I’d see her next year. She never said much after that. She simply nodded, placing her trust not in words, but in the squeeze of my hand.

Is that why this hurt so much? Why I flew back the second I heard the house had sold? Why I spent two long-haul flights convincing myself I was coming to help them pack. To see them. Not to say goodbye to a house that was never mine. Not really. I couldn’t squeeze the hand of this home. Couldn’t tell it how much it meant to me. How much I loved it. How much I’d miss it. It was only a house. Yet here I was, swallowing back tears anyway.

I took my usual seat on the veranda, opposite my grandmother’s. I looked out over the garden.

“Remember when Maya and I were convinced we were going to be WWE wrestlers?” I asked, watching the phantoms throw themselves around their imaginary ring on the lawn.

“Oh yes,” my grandmother said, snorting back a laugh. “That was awful! You two nearly gave me heart attacks.”

I laughed. “We were dedicated, that’s for sure.”

We truly were. Friday afternoons had once been wrestling matches on the lawn. Somewhere along the way, they became cups of tea on the veranda instead.

“Thankfully,” I said, “we grew up.” I looked over at her and saw her smile.

“Yes, well,” she said, “I, for one, was very grateful when you stopped all that nonsense!”

So was I. It turned out I hadn’t outgrown Friday afternoons after all. They’d simply changed. Sitting with her, just as we were now, with steaming cups of tea between us… talking. That was when I was happiest.

“Tell me about the new place.” I hadn’t seen it yet. Mom and I had decided to divide and conquer. She and Grandpa were at the new house. “Is it-”

“It’s lonely.” She cut me off, and I stared at her, confused.

“Lonely?” I repeated, expecting her to describe the laminate in the kitchen or something equally as mundane.

She sighed. “This house,” she said, gesturing weakly around us, “it…” She looked around. “We’re all scattered around the world now, living our own busy lives. This house…”

“Is the only place we’ve all ever been together,” I finished for her.

She nodded.

She must look around this house every day the way I was looking at it now, searching for the phantoms of years gone by. Finding comfort in the echoes of people who weren’t there anymore.

“You said to me yesterday that you don’t know how you’ll get used to our morning cuppas on a new veranda.” She smiled softly. “That’s how I felt about this one. Until I learned to look at your chair and see you laughing at nothing until you cried because you were so tired.”

I grinned. “Which was quite often,” I admitted. “Because of the clock.”

She sighed another sigh, and narrowed her eyes at me, but her smile grew. “I learned to look into the kitchen and see you and your mom carefully measuring the garlic for the lasagna so you didn’t give Grandpa the farts.” She giggled, a little embarrassed despite herself.

Our laughter faded as a mover stepped outside, muttering apologies as he lifted a rather large pot plant with a grunt. I felt my eyes burn.

“I get it, you know,” I said quietly. “The lonely thing.”

I thought of my first apartment in Auckland, haunted by literal ghosts. My labradoodle shaking sand from his coat outside our house in Tauranga. Every home I’d started out loving had become lonely eventually.

“The new place…” I swallowed. “There are no memories to cling to.”

My grandmother smiled softly and shook her head. “No,” she said. “It’s lonely because I’m afraid no memories will be made there. Not like here.” She placed her mug down on the table, her fingers lingering around the handle for a moment.

“It would be okay,” she said quietly, “if I knew some could be made.”

I thought of my life in New Zealand. I thought of Maya in the UK. Of my cousin who was constantly in and out of the country on rugby tours. Of the other whose social life seemed to involve everyone and everything except her family. I thought of my little brother, whose accent had faded along with his memories of our home.

She wasn’t afraid of a new house. She was afraid of a house that nobody visited. I reached across the table, took my grandmother’s hand, and squeezed it.

We sat in silence for a while. It wasn't comfortable, but it wasn't awkward either. We stayed like that until my phone buzzed on my lap.

"That was Mom," I said, slipping it into my pocket as I stood and gathered our mugs.

My grandmother nodded but didn't move. Her gaze drifted across the veranda, settling nowhere for very long. The table. The garden. The empty doorway. Finally, it came to rest on my chair. She smiled.

I picked up my keys from the kitchen counter and followed my grandmother to the front door. Holding it open for her, I paused. Just for a moment.

The house was impossibly quiet. Patches of carpet and wallpaper shone brighter where furniture had stood for decades, preserved beneath sofas, cabinets, and picture frames. Everything else had been worn gently by footsteps, fingerprints, and memories. I tightened my grip on the door handle, taking one last look around before offering my grandmother my arm.

The afternoon sun was warm as we walked towards the car. Gravel crunched beneath our shoes, just as it always had. I found myself glancing back over my shoulder every few steps, wondering whether I should have taken photos. Of each room. Of the kitchen. The giant cactus standing guard in the corner of the garden.

I shook my head.

The most important thing I could take from this house was already walking beside me.

"Let's take a selfie," I said, stopping so abruptly my grandmother nearly walked straight past me.

"I look a mess!" she protested. "And I hate having that camera so close to my face. It shows everything!"

"Please?" I wasn't above deploying my most pitiful expression, which had yet to fail me.

She muttered something that sounded suspiciously like, "Fine." And I quickly slipped my arm around her shoulders and held up my phone. Just before I snapped the photo, I tilted it ever so slightly, making sure to catch the little brass numbers above the front door.

36.

The drive was only three and a half songs long.

Not because we arrived halfway through one, but because I gave up and turned the music off altogether. I'd lived in this exact area for nearly half my life, yet even with Siri directing me, I had to concentrate. I couldn't have told you which way was east, let alone whether I was actually driving in that direction.

My grandmother straightened in her seat. That was my cue. A few seconds later, Siri announced our arrival.

It was small, which was exactly what they had wanted. A place without stairs. Less to clean. Less to maintain. Still, I found myself staring at its stark white walls, so different from the dark brick of the house we'd just left behind. It looked like one of those starter homes from The Sims. I cleared my throat and plastered on a smile.

"It looks nice," I said, slipping the rental into park beside my grandfather's ageing Hyundai. "Ready to give me the tour?"

"Oh, there's not much to see," my grandmother chuckled. "But of course."

I grabbed the few boxes we'd brought with us and followed her inside. It was nice. Modern. The white countertops gleamed with disuse, made brighter still by the ancient fridge wedged between pristine cabinetry. There hadn't been room for the old leather suite, so three unfamiliar sofas huddled around a television perched precariously on a half-assembled stand.

"Did you bring the kettle?" my grandfather called from outside. I followed his voice and found him and Mom sitting on dining chairs out on the new veranda.

I bent down and wrapped him in a hug. "Yeah, we did." He clapped his hands together with such enthusiasm that my mother startled.

"And just in time for threesies!" he declared. I glanced at my watch. 2:55 p.m. Of course. Not even moving house was going to stop his three o'clock cuppa and sweet treat.

"Have you seen your room yet?" he asked as he shuffled towards the kitchen.

I frowned.

My grandmother had shown me the master bedroom. The bathrooms. I thought I'd seen everything. I looked back down the hallway.

Sure enough, another door sat tucked away at the very end. As I pushed it open, I heard my grandmother's footsteps behind me. The first thing I saw was my suitcase, still wearing the baggage tags from my flight a week earlier, tucked neatly against the wall. Then my eyes drifted to the corner. An air mattress. Already made, the same crocheted blanket I'd wrapped around myself the night before was folded neatly across the foot.

My chest tightened. Without thinking, I slipped an arm around my grandmother's shoulders and pulled her gently against me.

"It isn't perfect," she said after a moment. "But it's all right for a week... isn't it?"

Her voice wavered. I wanted to tell her it was perfect. That I would have happily slept on the floor if I'd had to. That I would have found a place for myself here regardless, but I didn't have to. They had already made one for me, just as they always had. I wrapped my arms around her and held on.

BONG.

My eyes flew open.

BONG.

Slowly, I pulled back just enough to look at her. Her eyes were as wide as mine. One hand flew to her mouth.

BONG.

For a heartbeat, neither of us said a word. Then we burst into laughter.

"This house really is small!" my grandmother gasped between laughs. "The clock was never this loud!"

I wiped at my face and shook my head.

"It has always been exactly this loud, Granny," I choked out. "Told you it was cursed."