Page 4 of The Strawberry Field
The house appears at the end of the drive, just as the sky begins to dim. It looks smaller than I remember. Weather-worn. Two stories of tired brick, shutters hanging askew, paint chipped away by years of wind and rain. Sagging under its own history.
The lake is just visible through the trees, flat and colorless in the fading light.
Still. Completely still, like it, too, is holding its breath.
The air through my lowered window is warm but stale. No breeze. No sound. Not even the hum of insects.
I ease to a stop in the circular turn of the driveway. Two enormous cherry trees grace both corners of the house.They are loadedwith white blooms.
I see my mother in cutoff shorts, arguing with Daddy over where to dig the holes. “Those roots are going to come for our pipes one day,” he’d said.
“And you’ll thank me when they bloom,” she’d shot back.
Something inside me brightens at the visible evidence of life here and this piece of my mother and father that lives on. When I was young, I saw myself as a permanent fixture on this earth. But the truth I know now is we’re outlived by so many things. This house has outlived my parents and my brother. And so have these trees.
Is that why I went into medicine? Because I believed I could make life last longer than it was meant to? That if I worked hard enough, cared enough, I could keep things blooming?
Maybe.
But now I know better.
Michael died in a hospital bed surrounded by machines I thought I understood. Machines I thought worthy of my trust.
I couldn’t prevent his death. And neither could those machines.
None of us could.
Maybe it’s fitting that it chased me back here. Because this is where I learned the truth the first time: Death doesn’t care how hard you fight.
Eventually, it always wins.
Chapter Two
Sawyer
THE WHITE PAINT on the front door is chipped and peeling. The porch swing hangs crooked on rusted chains, and a few floorboards have warped upward like curled pages in an old book.
I stand there for a long moment, trying to absorb the energy of the place I once loved. Waiting for something to rise in me, nostalgia, comfort, familiarity.
But there’s nothing. No warmth. No welcome.
It’s as if the house has been empty for too long to remember how to offer comfort.
Or maybe it’s me who’s been empty for too long to receive it.
I dig out my key and unlock the door, shoulder aching under the weight of my suitcase. The air inside smells like the windows haven’t been opened in years. I switch on the lights, surprised they still work, then begin opening windows one by one, trying to coax the house to breathe again.
Outside, a breeze rustles in through the screens, lifting the faded blue curtains in the living room. I inhale deeply. The scent of spring is faint but there, the sweetness of honeysuckle blooms drifting in from the vines along the driveway fence.
For the first time in months, I breathe without fear.
In New York, it felt as if I counted every inhale. Wondered what I was pulling into my lungs. Wondered if it would be the thing that finally undid me. Every breath a gamble.
Here, the air just feels like air. Clean. Familiar. And I want to cry from the relief of it—until the relief turns cruel, reminding me of everyone who’ll never breathe this easily again.
But the relief is brief, and what follows is heavier—guilt, thick and immediate. It settles over me like a lead apron. My legs buckle beneath it, and I drop onto the old leather sofa by the picture window.
The cushions sigh beneath me. So do the curtains, caught in the shifting wind.
