I haul the final box upstairs into the apartment and drop it on the floor with huff. I should’ve moved back into the old trailer house next door, but this was smaller and I didn’t need a lot of room. I slide to the floor with a slouch, looking into the old living room. The old rug stayed, sitting in the middle of the wooden floor as it always had. The Aloe Vera still grew in the cloudy windowsill, the opaque glass providing just the right amount of light. I lean my head back against the wooden wall to my back hoping to dissuade gravity from pulling the tears out of my eyes. I looked at the mantle over the long since unused fireplace, glancing over the old sepia photographs and the framed folded flag. I let out a ragged sigh and pull myself to my feet, walking over for a closer look. I pickup the old pocket watch and run my thumb over the insignia before setting it back next to the other trinkets commemorating my grandfather. I drag the palms of my hands over my blurry eyes to wipe away the accumulating tears. It’s been decades, but it still feels like a crushing weight on my chest when I think about it too long. I turn the corner and face the apartment's single hallway, stretching back to the bathroom with the attic to my left and the two bedrooms on the right. The old wooden floor creaks underneath my feet in all the same places as I pass the master bedroom, opting instead to set up residence in the guest room at the back of the hall. With some effort I get the old lightswitch to flip on and after several long seconds of humming and whirring the light complies, that with the light from the windows illuminates the sky blue walls.

Most of the decor that was in here when I was a child was replaced after my grandmother remarried. The faded family portrait of my teenaged father and his parents that once consumed the entire wall above the bed was replaced with a fancy bed frame with a mirror and compartments for jewelry. I take a seat on the bed and examine the frame, planning out where my belongings will fit, and I notice a glimpse of something in one of them. I reach in and retrieve a silver chain necklace with three white pearls. As I run my fingers over the small pearls I determine that they are in fact real, they are separated from each other to prevent them from damaging one another and they don’t have the plastic texture or perfect roundness of the beads used as imitation, instead each is smooth to the touch and has slight imperfections in their shape the way organic pearls do. My grandmother never wore jewelry like this; I would’ve remembered this piece, but no one has been here since she and her husband moved out, opting to spend their golden years touring the world with each other on a never ending string of cruises. The necklace continues to perplex me as I run through all its possible owners in my head, if it had belonged to Nana she would have taken it with her, or if she had forgotten it she would have forgotten in the master bedroom in a safe place not in the guest bedrooms bed frame, it could be my mothers forgotten after a visit but I can’t imagine her leaving it here from her last visit to now without noticing. I shake my head with a sigh, it could belong to someone on Grandys side, I don’t know enough about any of them to rule that out, even if it is theirs I don’t have any contact information for them. I slide the necklace into my pocket for the moment to allow myself to return to unpacking.

This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

After settling in with all my belongings in their new place, I return to drifting through the old apartment like a ghost, interacting with small objects here and there but mainly just floating room to room. I always feel like a ghost here, a ghost of the present haunting the past. I leave the master bedroom closed. Even though this place was given to me I do not feel like the master of this house, I can’t bring myself to claim ownership of that room. Instead I enter the attic, pulling the string that turns on the single bulb to this room. Warm light washes over the wooden platform built atop the insulation and support beams of the skating rink ceiling. The platform itself has a single path left vacant for walking through the piles of boxes and loose belongings. As I wander through I let my eyes linger on all the memories it catches. The wooden rocking horse that used to sit behind the recliner until I grew too big to ride it, the handful of VHS tapes of the animated movies that had scenes I was afraid of as a child and couldn’t finish watching, the by now extremely outdated encyclopedia that still had a bookmark on the page with the entry about fairies, and things that are older than my memory that belong to my brothers childhood, or even my fathers, all of it covered in a fine layer of the dust that swirls through the air. I come to the end of the path that circled me back to the door and pull the string, turning the room dark again as I close the door behind me.

The decor throughout the apartment is mostly the same as it was when I was young, I don’t really feel any need to change it, I don’t have anything to replace most of it with anyways. So instead I just clean, wash all the blankets on the couch, throw away any expired food in the pantry, clean out the fridge, wash the dishes, get rid of the dust that coats practically everything. By the end of the day I collapse onto the guest room bed too tired to even change clothes. The sweatpants and t-shirt I wore for move in day are comfortable enough that I have no trouble drifting off to sleep regardless, besides I was going to change the bedsheets tomorrow anyways. As my consciousness fades my mind can’t help but wander back to the rink below me, how the thump of the music and the quiet roar of the people used to lull me to sleep.