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The small plank of wood in his hands is charred on the edges, smelling of mold and decay.
He doesn’t understand. This is where he lives, where his family is, but it doesn’t make any sense that this wreckage is piled where his beautiful home should be.
Where are the gardens that Talia and his oldest brother Jake spent hours planting and tending, the fiery orange tiger lilies and blood red chrysanthemums bracketed carefully by deceivingly fragile belladonna? What about the wrap-around porch Uncle Peter and young Cora had been working on?
How could it all just be… gone?
Even the basement is filled in, where they had spent rainy evenings as a family, the kids playfully flashing their fangs at each other.
He can’t smell them on the wreckage, either, the rotten wood beams and fire damage covering any lingering trace of them.
It’s as if they were never even here.
“I live here,” he says, because maybe if he believes it enough it will make it true.
“I live here,” as if he can just blink and his house will be standing, his mother on the porch waiting to welcome him home, the rest of his family just beyond the front door.
“I live here,” with the scent of ash and death in his mouth.
