by Dawn Tasaka Steffler

Angela notices the for sale sign the Monday it goes up. When she walks the dog the following Saturday, pop-up realtor signs dot the intersections: Open House Today 12-5.

In the living room, her husband, Pete, is hunched forward, elbows on his knees, watching the game. Angela tells him about the open house. “I wonder where Linda’s going to go now,” she muses, and without looking away from his precious 75-inch TV, Pete replies, “I hope you’re not thinking about going over there.” Offended, she tells him she isn’t; she just thought he’d like to know Linda’s house is on the market. She puts her purse on her shoulder. “I’m going to get groceries.”

She drives past Linda’s one-story ranch house to see if the open house is getting good traffic. Cars are parked along the curb, and the front door is wide open. But as usual, her eyes are drawn to the garage door; she can’t unsee Linda’s boy hanging from a garage rafter.

On her way home, Angela parks across the street from the house. She’s bought a bouquet of flowers from Safeway, and they’re resting on the passenger seat. She does this a few times a year, intending to leave them at the house, but she always chickens out, takes them home, puts them in a vase. But today feels different; it’s her last chance, Linda is moving. Also, Angela can compromise. Instead of leaving the flowers somewhere prominent, like the front porch, she can place them at the base of the crepe myrtle, where Linda probably won’t even notice them. 

But she doesn’t actually do that. She walks straight into the house, just like old times. She stops short immediately; the living room doesn’t look at all like she remembered. The furniture is all so nice. Which is when she realizes it’s been staged. Which means it’s too late – Linda’s already gone.

Voices drift from the kitchen. The agent is describing how good the schools are, and hearing Angela in the living room, she peeks in. Young and blonde, wearing too much makeup. “Let me know if you have any questions,” she says pertly.

The rest of the house feels different, too, newly painted, barely furnished, spacious. It doesn’t feel like anyone ever lived here. People are wandering through the house, all of them young couples, no doubt hoping to move into the neighborhood with its mature trees and wide streets. Angela assumes they don’t know about David in the garage.

Finally, there’s only the garage left. The knob feels cold. The same dim light comes through the small windows at the top of the garage door, but the space is empty. She hasn’t been in here for fifteen years. The little hairs on the back of her neck rise like hackles. She wonders if David is here, watching her. She makes a beeline for the rafter, stands beneath it, and examines its sturdy woodenness.

“Hi David, it’s me, Brandon’s mom,” she begins stupidly. She wants to see David’s face in her mind but can only recall his stiff high school portrait sitting on the table next to the guest book at his funeral. She closes her eyes, hoping to feel her way through it. “I just wanted to say Pete and I are sorry for not supporting you better. Brandon’s sorry, too.” She also remembers the question that always nudged its way up her body like a helium balloon during the holidays. Mother’s Day, Thanksgiving, Christmas. Was Linda alone? She didn’t like thinking about it because it made the fullness of her life feel thin. “I know I should’ve checked in on your mom more.” Her nose tingles, and tears seep out from the corners of her eyes, arcing down her cheeks. She opens her eyes and puts the bouquet on the concrete floor beneath the rafter, where she’s actually always wanted to leave it, every single time.

She walks quickly toward the door, doesn’t want anyone to catch her in the act. But when she opens it, Pete is standing there, startled, his hand in mid-reach for the doorknob. He looks over her shoulder and sees the flowers on the concrete floor.

“Okay, well, let’s get out of here,” he says, trying to make it sound as if he came here specifically to herd her away. But the shame in his eyes tells her he came for the same reasons she did.

Dawn Tasaka Steffler is an Asian-American writer from Hawaii who currently lives in the San Francisco Bay Area. She was a SmokeLong Quarterly Emerging Writer Fellow, winner of the Bath Flash Fiction Award, and selected for the Wigleaf Top 50 long list. Her stories appear in Pithead Chapel, Fractured Lit, In Short, Moon City Review, The Forge, and more.