I had expected dust. Silence. The stale emptiness of a place a man visited out of duty and guilt and family habit. I had expected cobwebs in the corners, old furniture under sheets, rusting tools, maybe a smell of hay and oil and the kind of loneliness that settles into buildings left standing too long with no one truly living in them.
Instead I found life.
Three couches formed a rough square in the living room around a wide coffee table scarred by use. Books were stacked in messy little towers on every surface, their spines bent in the middle from being read all the way through. Half-folded blankets lay draped over the arms of chairs. A child’s pink sneaker sat tipped on its side beside the front door, and next to it, smaller than anything I was prepared for, was a tiny blue rain boot with a yellow duck painted near the heel.
I remember staring at that boot longer than anything else in the room.
Because it made no sense.