The Release

The next backyard was littered with rusting lawn furniture and several green plastic garbage cans filled with yard debris. The house sported an abandoned porch– a product of owners who had decided their home didn’t need attention long before the world decided to crash down around them. In months, maybe years, the houses around this one would fall into the same sad state of disrepair. What had once been an eyesore to the manicured lawns and flower-basket neighbors was now just one more empty house.

Peering through the unwashed windows, Darla motioned for them to join her. Then she moved to the door, grabbed the handle and twisted it slowly.

“Probably empty,” she said, as if she were a bloodhound, and she swung the door open wider and motioned for Grant, Lucy and Salem to follow. “Let’s go. Inside,” she instructed like they were half-cognizant toddlers.

“We’re going inside? Why?” Lucy asked in a hushed voice as she stepped on the porch.

“To sit,” Darla said. “To watch,” she nodded toward the front of the house. “To wait.”

“Watch and wait for what?” Grant asked.

“For what and for whom,” she answered ambiguously, and then took three giants steps into the house, passing through a small mud room, filled from top to bottom with cardboard boxes, black sharpie labeling them—tax papers, kitchen utensils, Christmas décor—all in flowery, capital letters, script.

They entered after her and followed her into a kitchen. The blinds were drawn shut and the house was dim and stale. Lucy allowed her hand to travel over items dumped on to a wrinkled red and white gingham tablecloth. Among the debris, a dog collar. The tag read: Einstein. Lucy held the collar for a long time before setting it back down in the exact place it had been before. Each house was now a graveyard and its evidence of loss and grief was so clear and profound.

“Are they home?” Grant asked. He was standing near the counter. He reached for a coffee mug and picked it up, the coffee sloshed around—it had not been around long enough to mold.

Darla cracked her neck. “No one’s ever home,” she replied. “No one will ever be home.” She opened the fridge and the front of the kitchen flooded with light spilled from the appliance. She tossed aside cardboard boxes filled with leftovers, mushy vegetables, and went straight to a can of soda, popping open the tab and sucking the whole thing down in gulps. Wiping her mouth with the back of her hand, she crushed the can and dropped it to the floor where it clattered and rocked; the echoes of tin on linoleum reverberated throughout the house.

Lucy waited until Darla had moved into the living room before she bent down and picked up the can. She set it on the table gently and looked around.

“This doesn’t feel right,” she said. “This was someone’s home.”

Salem nodded.

From the other room, Darla had found a piano and was plunking out a clunky melody; the strings were in dire need of retuning and the song pealed out its ti

Grant moved past Lucy in the kitchen and made his way to the living room, where he sat down on the couch and picked up a discarded book, left open, mid-page, on the coffee table.

When Darla was finished with her piano playing, she wandered to the front window. She hooked her finger along the floral curtains and parted them and watched for a long moment, then let the curtain fall. The window looked out to the main street, and in front of that, a small corner market.

“We have to travel this way. But I know of a small group that’s been hanging out across the way. Just a group of kids. Once I know the coast is clear, we’ll just cross the street quickly and head up through the park. Lots of tree cover. Nothing to steal in the park,” Darla said.

Above the mantel were pictures of an older couple surrounded by children. One framed photo stood out above all the others. It was a photo of a boy with a chocolate-smeared grin and missing teeth, his face smashed up against the wrinkled cheek of a chuckling loved one. Lucy walked over and took the frame in her hand and then flopped it facedown, the back-stand still sticking straight up in the air. She moved to the next picture, the people were so full of life and clueless about their future. They were smiling and hugging, cherishing moments together and Lucy pushed those downward also until the entire mantel was scrubbed cleaned of the memories of bright futures and happier times.

“Where’d you meet my brother?” Lucy asked, turning to look at Darla, then she sat down next to Grant and watched as he flipped the pages of the book mindlessly.

“The airport.” But Darla shot Lucy a look that implied she wasn’t in a chatty mood.

Threadbare nerves racked her and she wanted to shake Darla and demand all the answers. It had been a long time since she started following Darla’s orders and still she had no idea who this woman was and how she knew Ethan. Lucy’s eyes must have betrayed her agony, because Darla took note and exhaled. She leaned her head against the wall.

“Ethan was there, at the airport, looking for your family,” Darla said. “They had grounded my plane to Seattle. There weren’t any gates available, so they evacuated us out of the emergency exits. Those little slides aren’t as fun as you would think,” she paused, but then took a long look at Lucy and continued. “And when I was in the terminal, I saw Ethan trying to get out to the tarmac to look at the planes. He was convinced that one of the planes might have your family inside.”

“My family made it to the airport?” Lucy asked. She didn’t know what she wanted the answer to be. Was there a chance they made it out alive? Could it have been their plane submerged in the Columbia River? Was it possible the plane never left?

“They weren’t at the airport. Either weren’t there or they weren’t able to be found,” Darla continued without missing a beat. “Security was so diminished that it didn’t take long for Ethan to find his way to the tarmac. He was ru

“But Ethan thought my family was at the airport. So, they weren’t at home?”

Darla waited and then she nodded.

“How many planes did he check? It’s possible that they still left. Right?” Now she didn’t know which version she wanted to be true. If her mom could have left her daughter and son behind or if somehow they had never made it to the airport, both versions seemed awful.

She gave a non-committal shrug. “Nothing was happening smoothly over there. It wasn’t like he could just ask someone about a plane and they could point him in the right direction. But…Ethan believes the plane left. Took off. Escaped Portland.”

She didn’t know what that meant.

“So, you see this guy looking for his family and you decide to help him?” Grant asked.

“Not exactly,” Darla replied. She swatted at an invisible fly, fully aware that she was being vague.

No one said anything. Salem shuffled her feet and stared mournfully at the ground. Grant reached into his bag and pulled out his water; he had only a sip left and he dripped the last few drops on to his tongue.

“Wait, was there a girl with him?” Lucy asked and she couldn’t tell if she was hopeful for survivors or indifferent. Grant went back to reading and he flipped another page in the book.

“He was alone.”

This was not surprising news, but Lucy took a moment to process the implication that A