Chapter 10 - The Sound of the Floor
We didn't go back to our old house in Asheville. There were too many ghosts there—too many memories of searches, of despair, of nights spent staring at the driveway waiting for headlights that never came.
With the help of Caroline’s family, we purchased a modest single-story craftsman home outside of Boone, high in the Blue Ridge Mountains. It had wide porches, an acre of wild meadow, and enormous windows that looked out over the rolling crests of the mountains. There was no basement; the house sat on an open, raised timber post foundation, surrounded by wild ferns and blackberry brambles.
Six months after the rescue, Meredith’s trial concluded. She was found incompetent to stand trial due to severe, delusional narcissistic personality disorder with paranoid features, and was remanded to the Central State Hospital forensic psychiatric unit for indefinite confinement. We didn't attend the hearing. We didn't need to hear her voice again.
It was an early autumn evening when the final shift occurred.
Noah was sitting on the living room rug, building an elaborate wooden train track with Lily. His skin had regained its healthy, sun-browned tone, his hair was cut short again, and he had gained twelve pounds of solid, healthy weight. He still had nightmares—nights where he woke up screaming, reaching for the walls of a concrete box that no longer existed—but those nights were becoming fewer and further between.
The floor beneath them was made of wide, reclaimed pine boards, salvaged from an old barn in the valley. They were creaky, uneven, and full of character, shifting with every footstep.
Lily paused her play, looking down at the wood. She tilted her head, a mischievous, familiar grin spreading across her face.
She pressed her ear flat against the pine floor.
I froze in my chair by the window, the old, icy terror instantly gripping my chest. Caroline, setting down a bowl of apples on the kitchen counter, went completely still.
Lily stayed there for three seconds, listening intently to the space beneath the house.
Then, she looked up at Noah.
“Noah,” she whispered, her eyes dancing with laughter. “There’s a monster down there.”
Noah stopped working on his train track. He looked at his sister, then down at the floorboards.
Instead of shrinking back, instead of crying or looking for a hiding place, my nine-year-old son dropped to his knees, pressed his palms against the wood, and hammered his small fists down three times with all his might.
*Thump. Thump. Thump.*
The sound rattled the teacups on the table. Outside, beneath the floor, a startled squirrel scrambled out from under the timber posts and raced across the grass toward the apple trees.
Noah leaned close to the seam in the floor and shouted at the top of his lungs:
“Get out of here, monster! This is my house!”
He looked up at Lily, and both of them collapsed onto the rug in a fit of hysterical, breathless laughter that filled every corner of the room, drifting through the open windows and out into the vast, bright, endless mountain air.
May you like
I looked across the room at Caroline. She was smiling through tears, her hand resting against her heart.
I stood up, walked over to the rug, and sat down between my children, feeling the solid, honest pine boards beneath me—grounded, safe, and finally, completely whole.
