The House on the Hill

It was my mother who finally said: let us stop this time. The house had no gate, only a gap in the hedge where a gate had once been. The garden was wild in the way that suggests someone once cared very much and then stopped caring all at once. We stood at the door for a long moment before knocking. No one answered. No one lived there anymore, that much was clear. But the door was unlocked, and the rooms inside still held furniture - a table, two chairs, a bookshelf with three books standing upright like sentinels. We did not go in. We stood at the threshold and looked, and that was enough. On the drive back my mother was very quiet. I did not ask what she was thinking. Some things are not questions.