This Is Still Home

We didn’t leave. That’s the first thing I need you to understand. We told them we did. Packed every box like it meant something. Told everyone that we called the movers and set a date. We pretended everything was fine, even gave the landlord a set of keys, ones we’d had copied months ago, back when things first started to unravel. We left a note on the counter, folded in half. It said: Thank you for everything. For letting us call this place home. We hope the next family finds what we found here. Wishing you the best. It was polite. Respectful. Almost honest. But it wasn’t true. We never left. Tina joked about the attic the day we got the notice to vacate. Said, “Nobody checks the attic. Not in houses like this.” She said it between tears, but there was a bite in her voice. A kind of dare. I laughed. At first, I thought she was just angry, or tired, we both were. But the more we talked about it, the more it stopped sounding like a joke.

The attic in this place is nothing, just a crawlspace slapped together with splinters, dust and bugs. Low ceiling. No floor, just beams and insulation clumped like animal fur. It creaks when you breathe. There’s no standing room, no sitting upright. You live bent, or sideways, or pressed against the roof like you're part of the house itself. But at least it was ours and that’s what mattered. No rent. No mortgage. No lights. Just the two of us, a blanket between the joists, a few things we didn’t sell or throw away. Tina’s winter coat, my father’s old thermos. A little solar lantern we keep turned low. You'd think it’d feel like hiding. But it doesn’t. It feels like refusing to let go and I’m proud of us for that. We laid down the last blanket we owned. Rolled it twice for padding. Our bed. We made a little shelf out of a milk crate. One spoon. One mug. She still hums when she washes it out, like we’re camping or something. Like this is temporary. But it’s been twenty-one days. The new family moved in two Thursday’s ago. Young couple. Three kids. Tina listens through the floor boards. She barely blinks. She mouths their names to herself, memorizing them like lines in a play. “They don’t deserve it,” she whispered to me last night. “This house. They don’t feel it the way we did.” I didn’t answer. I just watched her shadow shake across the rafters. 

It’s hard to believe it’s been a year. The fear faded somewhere in the second month. You’d think living in someone else's ceiling, excuse me, living in our ceiling with someone else living down below, would keep you in a state of panic, but no. You get used to the routine. The quiet. The creaks that aren't yours. By the third month, I wasn’t afraid. Just… alert. That month was the hardest. They got a dog. A big one. Maybe we’d been moving too much at night. Maybe it caught our scent. Either way, it started barking at the vents. Scratching at corners. Waiting at the baby’s door like it knew something was wrong, like it knew we were right above. Our attic door opens into the ceiling of their nursery. Tina stopped sleeping. I could see it in her face even in the dark, her guilt. I felt it too. We didn’t want to hurt anyone. But this was our home. We’d been pushed out of everything else. I did what had to be done. They told the kids the dog ran away. They cried for a few days. Drew pictures of it. Taped them to the fridge. Then the fish came to replace it. Two of them, bright orange with no names. Harmless little things. Not the type to blow our cover.

We’ve stayed out of sight. Always. But we’ve watched over them, in our own way. Singing to the little ones when they had a hard time falling asleep, tucking them in when they would kick off their blankets. It almost feels like they’ve become our own little family in some ways. Which makes me sad. It’s almost time for their lease renewal. Strange thing to admit, but I think I’ll miss them if they go. I hope they don’t. They don’t know it, but they’ve been a kind of friend to us, even if they don’t know anything about the friendship we’ve created. Like living above a show you’ve grown to love. We’ve heard every fight, every birthday, every lullaby. They’ve lived their lives and we’ve lived inside the margins of it. We don’t talk about our family much anymore. I don’t know what happened after we disappeared. Maybe they held a service. Maybe they didn’t. I picture flowers, maybe a photo of us in the foyer of some church I’ve never stepped foot in. I wonder who cried. I miss them. I do. But this, this here, with Tina in the dark and our little family below… This is home.