Warning: This story explores grief topics and could be difficult for folks that have recently lost someone close to them. If that's you, whether you decide to read or not, I'm sending you so much love!

The Johnson family lake house had always been a magical place. Passed down from generation to generation, it held secrets and memories like the rest of them.

Between doctor’s appointments, work, and, truthfully, just life, it had been almost five years since they’d graced its halls. Five years of waiting, hoping, and emotions swelling like juice in ripened fruit. What used to be a home full of late-night conversations, a crackling fire, and the aroma of syrup and coffee in the morning was now silent, dormant, and lonely.

Valerie was the first to walk through the large, ornate oak door, her mother and son close behind. Her shoulders were up to her ears as she gently pushed it open, making it creak on its hinges.

She was the first to see how the house had changed.

The unfamiliar sight made her gasp as she pushed both arms out, blocking the other two from entering.

“This isn’t our house!” she yelled, turning on her heel and trying to push them back toward the car.

“Val, stop being ridiculous,” her mother said. Disgust leaked from her voice like oil from an old car, threatening to stain whatever it touched. “He was my husband.” She paused, letting her sentence linger between them. “I don’t want to be here either, but we promised him we’d go through his things together.”

There it was, the twist of a knife in the form of a reminder that Valerie’s emotions about her father’s passing were somehow less valid, less potent than Alma’s. Though she was accustomed to her mother’s habit of wielding unexpected weapons, it still made her curl her hands into fists.

Alma pushed them aside, forcing her way in, only to abruptly stop as well. She looked at Valerie, eyes full of questions.

“Let me see! Let me see!” Evan yelled, pushing through the two women standing in his way.

The three of them—eerily alike with their mouths gaping open—took in their house, their new house.

“It’s like a maze…” There was admiration in his voice.

The previously ordinary entryway was now something else entirely. The short hallway spat out into multiple doors. One here, another there, and even more down the center. A vast weeping willow stood directly in front of them. A tree not uncommon for their Southern Missouri lake house climate, but very unusual inside these four walls. Its branches stretched out along the walls and across the ceiling.

“This is amazing!” The boy ran into the belly of the home.

Valerie yelled at him to return, but her voice cracked because she knew there was no use. He would only leave if he was pulled out. Which meant they didn’t have a choice—they had to follow him inside.

“If you were a better mother, he’d listen to you when you told him what to do,” Alma said, her lips twisted into a snarl.

She stepped over the threshold and took tentative steps down the hallway.

Retorts and thoughts swarmed in Valerie’s head, but she did what she always did—kept them to herself.

“Over here!” Evan yelled, forcing them to follow his voice.

They passed door after door along the way—more than had ever existed before.

“How is this even possible?” Valerie asked, more to herself than anyone else.

“I don’t know, and I don’t care. Let’s get Evan and get out.”

Valerie trailed her fingers along the vines on the wall as she walked. They seemed to react to her touch, constricting before expanding again, as if seeking more of her.

Several doors down, halfway through the labyrinthine hallway, they found him. He was in a room, completely empty aside from himself. His gaze was down, watching the floor glimmer and sparkle under his feet.

“Mom! Look! It’s like it knows I’m here.” He reached down, and as his fingertips met the floor, it illuminated even brighter. “Come try!”

Valerie and Alma exchanged a look, speaking without words. They took deep breaths before entering. It wasn’t until they were in that they noticed the mirrors. Floor-to-ceiling reflections covered every inch of the room.

Valerie caught her own eye in the mirror. She saw a woman coiled tight with anger and exhaustion, and looked away quickly. Alma, meanwhile, ran her fingers along the cold glass, as if seeking a crack in her own façade.

“Look! It’s us! Just us everywhere!” He was giddily twirling, watching each reflection bounce off the next.

“Come on, you two, let’s—” The door they’d just walked through slammed shut, stifling her words.

Valerie rattled the knob, but it didn’t budge.

“You locked the damn door!” Alma yelled.

“Seriously? You were the last one in,” Valerie snapped.

Alma ignored her. “We’ve got to get out of here.” She began pawing at the mirrors, searching for a break or lever.

“I think we just have to sit here,” Evan offered.

“Nonsense,” Alma said. Her sweaty fingers left smudges on the previously pristine mirrors.

Valerie gently pulled Evan’s wrist. They sat in the middle of the room, watching Alma frantically search.

“Mom, come sit. Let’s put our heads together and figure something out.”

She couldn’t see Alma’s face but saw her head shake side to side. Valerie could imagine her expression—eyebrows pinched together and mouth twisted in a frown. A look she’d grown accustomed to over the years.

“If your father were here, he’d be sitting right there next to you two. I’ve always been the only one fixing things in this family.”

Evan’s widened eyes flicked between the two women. His limbs jittered, as if wishing he could run and hide.

“Well, Dad isn’t here, and even though you haven’t acknowledged it once, he’s dead, and there’s nothing you can do about it! We might as well sit here and stare at ourselves for a bit. Get used to it just being the three of us!”

Everyone froze. She’d said the one thing they were all thinking but refused to utter. Silence. Evan held his breath, afraid even that would be too loud.

“He’s gone,” Valerie said again.

Just as she finished speaking, a door opened. But it wasn’t the one they’d entered through—it was new, one they hadn’t noticed before.

Alma’s eyes narrowed. “What did you do?” She pointed accusingly.

“Nothing! You’re the one touching everything!”

“No, you did something!”

They bickered back and forth as usual.

Evan slowly rose and walked toward the new door. He hadn’t even reached it before feeling the heat radiating from it, warming his face like the sun.

He turned to search for the original entry point, and nearly collapsed at what he saw: nothing. The door was gone.

“Guys…” he tried but couldn’t be heard over their arguing. “Mom!” he yelled louder, successfully grabbing their attention. “The door is gone.”

The women turned in unison.

Valerie ran to Evan, stopping him from getting closer to the new door. “Step back. We don’t know what’s going on.”

She felt how sticky his skin was. The room’s heat made sweat bead up.

“I think we have to go in there…” he said. It was strange, this feeling in his gut, the same sensation that had led him to the mirror room. A silent call begging for his company. It was calling now, thick and hot, craving their presence. “I don’t think we have a choice.”

Valerie leaned forward, trying to peek into the new room. Like the room of mirrors, it looked empty, unassuming. Then she glanced around. There were no other exits within it.

“I think you’re right.” She knelt in front of Evan, face-to-face. “You stay behind me the entire time, you hear?”

He tucked his bottom lip into his mouth and nodded.

No word fit the next room better than inferno. Desert-like heat engulfed them, making breathing feel labored.

“What the hell happened to our house?” Alma asked, still half-convinced it was a nightmare.

She lingered by the door, between the coolness of the mirror room and this new, uncomfortable warmth. “I’ll stand here and make sure no more doors—” Swoosh! A large fire erupted next to her, forcing her into the hot room. The door disappeared, replaced by flames as tall as them. At first in one spot, the fire quickly encircled the room, catching the edges ablaze.

Alma backpedaled to the center, feeling for Valerie and Evan.

The three huddled together, creating as much space as possible between themselves and the flames.

Evan buried his head in Valerie’s stomach, whimpering.

Swoosh! It was like someone had doused everything with lighter fluid. The flames doubled in size, traveling closer and closer to them.

Alma turned toward them and yanked Evan free from Valerie’s embrace.

Her hands were on his shoulders as she swiftly shook him.

“This is all your fault, you little shit! You should’ve never run in on your own!”

Valerie pulled him from Alma’s grip and pushed him behind her, effectively turning herself into a wall between them.

“Don’t you dare speak to him like that!”

“Oh, here we have mother of the year! You’re right. I shouldn’t blame him. I blame you and your parenting.”

Valerie reached behind herself to pull Evan closer in.

“Would you prefer that I was like you? You want me to scare him so bad that he doesn’t have a relationship with me? Then, when he’s older, you want me to ridicule every single fucking thing he does until he despises me?”

Heat crawled up Valerie’s spine, but she was no longer convinced it was just from the growing flames around them.

“Oh, so you despise me, do you?” Alma said, smiling, a smile that made Evan think of the villains he watched in his cartoons. “Well, I despise you as well. Ever since you were born, you have taken everything from me! My body, my energy, my husband! You’re not the only one who is angry!”

“Finally, you admit it! You’ve never loved me!”

The flames, which had been several feet away at first, were creeping closer and closer to the trio.

“Love? You think this is about love? Of course I love you! I’m your mother!”

“See, that’s your problem. Love doesn’t just mean cleaning and cooking and making sure I was picked up after school. It’s understanding and listening and sharing—things that Dad did. Things that you have never done with any of us! I feel terrible for Dad because he was so great but was stuck with a partner like you!”

Valerie’s chest heaved up and down, her words leaving her breathless. She stared at her mother, eyes like the weapons she was so used to receiving. Then her stony expression eased as she saw tears welling in Alma’s eyes.

Evan began pulling at his mother’s shirt. The fire was barely a foot away from them, inching in and threatening to devour them.

“Mom…” he tried, but neither of the women could hear him.

Alma swiped an escaping tear from her eye.

“I was never good at this,” she said, motioning toward Valerie. “At being a mom. I don’t know how I’m going to do this without your father.”

Valerie stared at her, her head empty of words.

“Mom!” Evan yelled. The flames danced by his face, threatening to lick burns onto his skin.

Finally recognizing how close the flames were, the three held each other and squeezed in as best they could.

The flames grew taller, closer, more daring until—szzzz—they suffocated and ran back to the edges of the room, leaving nothing but thick smoke in their wake.

Alma was the first to move. She frantically craned her neck around the other two, checking for burns, cuts, or any sign of injury.

Once realizing they were all in one piece, they turned toward the far end of the wall, opposite from where they’d arrived, already anticipating what was next—another door.

This one was smaller compared to the other two, barely coming up to their waist and just the right size for Evan.

The three looked at each other, nodding in agreement that they were as ready as possible.

Valerie squatted down to enter first. Before she could bow her head through the doorway, Alma placed her hand on her shoulder.

Her gaze was down, unable to look at Valerie. She cleared her throat before stumbling into her words.

“I’m sorry that I’m not good like your father. I want to be better.”

Valerie gently placed her hand atop Alma’s. “I want us to be better.”

Evan’s chest felt like it was swelling. The tiniest smile formed on one side of his mouth. He looked between the two and said, “I’m sorry I ran ahead of you guys.”

Valerie scratched the back of her head, relieving the itch of something new happening in their family. She bent her head down and entered the third room.

This one started off just as the other two had. Empty, quiet, nothing but their breathing and thoughts to keep them company. Moments after being inside, the door was no longer there, as well.

A low trickling of movement sounded around them. It was like a creek in a forest, the dripping of a faucet, or the filling of their pool once the spring rain ceased. It was water.

Evan raised his foot before splashing the small puddle at their feet.

“There’s a leak,” he joked.

But the water kept running, kept rising in the room. Realizing what was happening seemed to dawn on them at the same moment. Valerie and Alma ran to either side of the room, hunting for an escape.

“Where’s it coming from?” Alma yelled.

“I can’t find the source!”

“Mom!” Evan yelled.

She looked back and found her son with water up to his waist.

She waded toward him and held him in her arms.

“We’ll find a way out of this, just like we did the other two rooms.” She looked at her mom, her eyes full of worry, silently asking what they should do.

“I’m not sure how we got out of the other two…” Alma’s hand was on her chin, trying to figure out the answer.

Water continued filling the room. It was at Evan’s chest.

“I’ll hold you up!” He climbed his mother and sat on her shoulders.

The roar of the water was both deafening and calming.

It got up to the women’s chins. They only had so much time left.

“Who knew that, after decades of this place being a normal house, it would do all this?” Alma said, something unfamiliar in her voice—humor.

“At least we’re in the place where most of our good stories happened.”

“Like when Pop Pop almost burned down the Christmas tree!” Evan chimed in.

“I told that man to quit lighting candles so close to it,” Alma said with a laugh.

The water was high enough to lift them from the ground, making them swim a bit to stay afloat. Evan, now off his mother’s shoulders, was lightly splashing at it.

“My favorite time was when the two of you called yourself making a turducken!”

“Oh god… it was so bad!”

“No one should ever eat those things,” Val said. Her cheeks were starting to ache. This, these few seconds of laughter, was more than they’d had in years. Probably the first since her dad’s diagnosis.

Evan looked at the water around them. He noticed the way it seemed to hover at the same place, no longer rapidly rising.

“I thought about selling this house as soon as he went. Didn’t want to go through everything, didn’t care. Just wanted to get rid of it.”

“But what about… everything?”

“None of it feels like it matters anymore.”

It was then that Evan noticed the water pushing them further up, toward the ceiling.

“No! Mom, Gran, you guys gotta keep talking about memories! The memories make the water go down!”

Pushing aside their questions, they did as he said.

Alma talked about telling him she was pregnant in the yard and teaching him how to play Scrabble in the main room.

Valerie reminisced about their Twilight Zone marathons and the way he’d dance with her to the Backstreet Boys on the porch.

Evan talked about how his grandfather never complained while teaching him to ride a bike and his uncanny ability to make the best eggs and potatoes, so greasy and delicious.

With every shared memory, the water seemed to ease, pulling back like a tide soothed by the moon. Laughter, not forced, but real, echoed against the walls, and the heavy air lightened.

By the time they finished, the water was at their knees and still dwindling.

They each had damp cheeks, a mixture of water and tears.

“Wow, I didn’t think I’d ever be able to talk about this stuff,” Alma said. She wiped her eyes with the heel of her palm. “I don’t want to forget any of it.”

“We won’t,” Valerie said. She looked at Evan, whose small hand still gripped hers tightly. “We can’t.”

A soft creak made them all turn. A door, simple, familiar, swung open on the far side of the room. Beyond it, the lake shimmered, quiet and untouched, as though none of this had happened.

They stepped through, blinking into the light, and found themselves back in the original entryway. The willow tree was gone. The hallways were back to normal. Only the faint scent of smoke and damp earth lingered.

Valerie exhaled, long and deep, and glanced at her mother. “Do you... still want to sell it?”

Alma traced her fingers along the wall, pausing at an old picture of the four of them, taken years ago. She shook her head, tears glinting but her voice steady. “Not yet.”

As they stepped out into the sunlight, Evan looked back one last time. For a split second, he thought he saw his grandfather’s reflection in the window, smiling and waving. But when he blinked, it was gone.

And the lake house felt like home.

Why I Wrote This

I’ve been thinking a lot about grief lately. Probably because I’m going to visit my family soon and there’s a layer of it that stays with them. I swear it’s on the walls of my family home like an older smoker lived there.

Parts of this story feel very personal. I had a grandfather pass unexpectedly and it ripped open a lot within my family. We’ve yelled at each other, cried, hugged… You name it, we did it. Luckily, we’ve come a long way. The beauty of emotional bursts is that once it’s out in the open, you can work through it without the unnecessary filters.

Still, I wish a house like this existed, a place that would draw us through the full storm of grief and love in a single day, so we could come out the other side lighter.

Thanks for reading! Hope you enjoyed the story! :)

-Bri