My Husband Told Me Never To Go To The House At Blue Heron Ridge Until Three Years Later

I sat in the car for a long moment with the engine off, listening to the silence settle around me.

It was not truly silent. The mountain had its own language: wind moving through pine canopy in long, slow exhalations, a creek somewhere below finding its way over stones, the distant call of a bird I couldn’t name. But after three years of the particular silence of an empty house, this felt different. This felt alive.