All but the willow

The house sagged at the roof line showing aged shingles curling off or simply lost years before. Paint peeled along windows clouded with dust and time. Cement was crumbling from the eight stairs leading to the broken screen door. She remembered jumping from the side of those stairs when she was nine, spraining her ankle on the landing. The pain in her ankle hadn’t stopped her from achieving the sanctuary of the willow tree. That too was now decayed, the husk of it the only vestiges of a once mighty tree. In the dimming light of dusk, the deadened limbs looked like skeletal fingers seeking prey.

Her mind’s eye traveled through the barren house, details as vivid as the sun flashing in her head. There was no need to enter and view it up close. The deep porcelain double sink under the small kitchen window where her hands spent innumerable hours washing dishes. The smell of damp that emanated from under the cellar door where the spider’s webs dangled under the frame of the house. Around the corner to the narrow door that opened to the even narrower creaky steps that lead to the attic. The smell of dust and sweat and fear clinging to the care wood of the roof joists.

Scent memory lingers the longest she mused. And wondered if out of sight, out of mind was really true.

Turning her back on the house she had lived in for so many years, she strode away. When she reached her car at the end of the drive, she tossed her bag through the open window and turned for one long last look.

Still staring at the house, she opened the car door, got behind the wheel and the engine rumbled to life. She finally looked away and put the car in gear. Just before turning out of the drive, she waved a hand out the window back toward the house.
 Whoosh!

Bright burning flames engulfed the house.

Months later the local news was still speculating on the intensity of the unknown fire that destroyed the house and property so swiftly and completely.

 Except for the remains of the willow tree.