I’m Evelyn, a 74-year-old widow of nearly a decade. While cutting the hedges in the garden, my husband Richard unexpectedly died of a heart attack. He was complaining about the weeds one minute, and then he was gone. Just me and this ancient, creaking house—no children, no family left.
I’ve kept myself occupied, which is humorous in a sadistic sense. Nothing fills the need, not even my bread, my roses, or the volunteer shifts at the library where the children roll their eyes when I suggest Dickens. You hear things in that silence.
The groan of old beams and the drip-drip-drip of water through a roof that I’ve been too poor to restore are two ways the house whispers its degradation.