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A small jewel-plated box crossed my gaze. I gasped and set the phone down to free my hands. My fingers wrapped around the tiny device, a music box no bigger than a tangerine.
“What is it?” Aly asked, shouting loud enough for me to hear her.
I tapped the speakerphone button on my phone and continued my examination of the treasure. “It’s the music box my grandmother used to play for me every night before bed. Whenever she would visit, or whenever I would spend the night here, she would wind it up, and I would fall right asleep.”
I easily found the windup mechanism and twisted it around until the music played. Two figure skaters emerged from the box, twirling about on the ice as they clung to one another.
That was it. That song. It’d been playing in my head every night since the funeral.
It brought back the stories about how my grandparents first met, in the middle of winter at a skating rink. The music box had been a gift from my grandpa to my grandma to commemorate the day their lives changed forever. A beautiful sentiment for someone else perhaps. But, I had decided long ago that true love was not in the cards for me.
The tune floated through the room, filling it with all the same warmth and feelings of love I enjoyed while my grandmother was still alive. The gentle lullaby calmed me, and I smiled for the first time in days.
Shortly after, I said my goodbyes to Aly and left the room. I still had an entire trunk of clothes to remove from the car and sort through before the end of the night. Like a trick of the mind, that lullaby once again lured me into the realm of sleep, and I felt more tired now than ever before.
I dragged the trunk inside but made it only about halfway through the living room before plopping down onto the couch. Damn, that music box turned me into Pavlov’s dog, triggering the snooze cycle as soon as I heard it. My eyes fell closed, and I was out.
I wasn’t sure how long it had been since I nodded off to sleep, only that the sounds and smells that woke me would haunt me in my sleep for years to come.
A scent like charcoal wove its way through the house, replacing the peppermint and cinnamon signature fragrance of my grandmother’s home. A gentle crunch like crisp autumn leaves beneath one’s feet echoed down the halls. It swept to my ears in a cautionary whisper. Not a roar, nothing overtly booming, but enough to draw my suspicions toward the back of the house.
What in the actual hell?
I rose to my feet, finding my steps surprisingly unsteady. I lost my balance and tumbled into one of the cabinets—luckily nothing containing grandma’s good china. My shoulder stung like hell though, and the force of the collision was more than enough to jar me out of my stupor.
What’s wrong with me? Why do I feel this way?
I made my way toward the back of the house, where the kitchen and the stairs leading to the second story of the house were. I made it only a few feet deeper into the house before I realized the source of those horrific smells. Billowy clouds of smoke filtered into the room, preventing me from taking another step further. I couldn’t make out any flames or any light, beyond that of a distant spark or two in the distance. But all this smoke could only mean one thing.
Fire.
My pulse leaped into my throat, strangling and robbing me of the last few gasps of air left around me. My first instincts told me to run. I needed to escape, to put as much distance between me and the house as possible.
As soon as I reached the outside, I was equally as surprised by the collection of fire trucks and vehicles poised outside my house for help. Where had they come from? Had a neighbor seen the fire and called them? How long had the fire been going on for?
None of it made any sense. This was a small town for sure. But even I couldn’t have imagined the fire trucks would get here that fast.
I pinned the argument in my mind for later, making a note to revisit the unsettling feeling I had about all of this with a clearer head. Instead, I turned around to face Hummingbird Hollow. A weight plummeted from my chest down to my toes in an instant.
If I wasn’t still breathing, I’d have thought my heart had stopped. Flames lapped up the side of the house, exiting through a window in the upstairs part of the house.
It was a bedroom, an old guest room decorated in the French Colonial style—or maybe not. I was remembering it as it was three years ago, and I hadn’t stepped foot in it since. Even today, I kept away from the second floor of the house. There was enough nostalgia and memories to keep me company on the first floor without venturing any further.
So, if I haven’t even been up there, then what would start the fire?
A fireman appeared beside me, tugging on my arm and turning me around to face him. “Is there anyone still in the house?”
I shook my head, still in shock. “No. Just me.”
“Where’s it coming from?” he asked.
“It looks like it’s upstairs.” I shrugged. “I don’t know. I didn’t go up there.”
The only rooms I had explored were downstairs, mainly the living room and my grandmother’s bedroom. Fear pierced through my chest, awakening my thrumming pulse with another spike in pace.
The music box.
I’d never forgive myself if something happened to it. All the other memories, almost every other part of the house, I could part with. But not that. Even as an adult, I replayed that song over and over again in my mind. It was a soothing sort of lullaby that had kept me going all these years. Another chant to champion my way forward. Just as my grandmother always had.
