What Are We If I Stay
It has been three weeks, six days and seven hours since Georgia disappeared through the door. The one carved from mist that sometimes hangs between the two dogwood trees. Esme stares at the spot through her kitchen window. This time of year the dogwoods are crowned with soft white petals. Last June, Esme and Georgia spread a checkered blanket beneath the flowering branches and fed each other strawberries and slices of Honeycrisps topped with curls of aged gouda. Today, her stomach curdles to look at the spot. But she cannot bring herself to look at the folded note she is holding, either.
†
It was Esme who saw the door first. It appeared late morning in the slushy in-between time when Spring tries to wrest itself from Winter. They stood together, Esme cradled against Georgia’s chest, trying to figure out what the door could mean. It was gone before their coffee cooled.
It was Georgia who kept the notebook. When the door appeared. Under what conditions. How long it stayed. There was no pattern as far as either of them could tell.
Esme is observant: she saw the eager shining in Georgia’s eyes whenever the door appeared, the way that Georgia withdrew in the days following its disappearance. But Esme never thought it would come to this.
†
One week after Georgia left, Esme stopped sleeping in their bed. It was too painful to wake up in the middle of the night clutching cold sheets in the spot where Georgia should have been. Instead, she made a spot for herself on the couch each evening, thinking of what Georgia might write in the note that would surely come—she said she’d send word as soon as she was able. Each morning Esme rolled her quilt and pillow back up and placed them on a high shelf in the hall closet, certain that today would be the day.
†
Two weeks after Georgia left, the door appeared again. Esme was drying dishes and in between putting away a glass and reaching for a plate—there it was—the door spanned the distance between the dogwoods that framed it, its pointed archway lost to their thickening canopy. A dish slipped from Esme’s grasp and shattered.
An anxious pump of adrenaline spiked in her stomach and settled in her throat. The room spun, and Esme’s breaths came too close together. She leaned her weight into the counter until the edge bit against her palms. She focused on the crunch of the broken plate beneath her houseshoes. The plink of water dripping in the faucet.
Her vision cleared and she went outside to wait. Esme waited until the sun was a sliver of burnished gold at the treeline. She waited until fireflies began their flickering dance across the yard. Even as the hope that was sustaining her slowed to a trickle and was replaced with grief as bottomless as the summer days are long, she waited. The moon rose heavy and bright and Esme made her bed once again in the living room, alone.
†
Today, she holds a note. It is written on a large heart-shaped leaf with scalloped edges. The leaf is thin and pliable enough to have been folded in half without cracking. Esme found it on her front porch pinned beneath a rock. The sparrows that live in the bushes on either side of the front door ceased their morning twittering as she bent to pick it up. Esme sits at her kitchen table and unfolds the leaf. The note does not say: The stars here remind me of your smile, the air of the soft scent I only find when I bury my face between your neck and shoulder. I miss you. I’ll be home soon.
The note also does not say: I can now say I have explored another world only to discover that which I already knew; there is no one on this earth or beyond that compares to you.
Instead, Esme runs a trembling finger down flaking letters—she has a dark suspicion—and reads: The maples cant be trusted! Unsure about birds. DO NOT FOLLOW.
© 2022 K.S.Walker
About the Author
K.S.Walker is a speculative fiction writer from the Midwest with a fondness for stories with monsters, magic, and/or love gone awry. When they’re not obsessing over a current WIP or their TBR pile you can find them outside with their family. K.S. Walker has previously been published at FIYAH. You can find them online at www.kswalker.net or on Instagram @kswalker_writes.