I am writing a book :)

Hello! Today I am publishing something a little different! I’m writing a novella. It centres around a man returning to his childhood home, where a chest of drawers holds the pieces of his mother’s life—and perhaps the answers to his own. It’s a story about memory, grief, and the quiet resilience that carries us through. Today, I’m sharing the prologue and chapter 1 as the journey begins. I would love to hear any feedback in the comments section.

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Prologue

The men were careful with it. She could tell by the way they shifted their grip at the top of the stairs, pausing to glance down the hallway before moving again. One held it high, his knuckles white where the weight pressed into him, while the other grunted softly and adjusted his stance, boots thudding against the carpet runner.

“In the corner there,” she said quietly, nodding toward the far side of the room. Her voice felt smaller than she expected, almost cautious, as though speaking too loudly might startle something in the air.

They set it down gently by the window. One gave it a little shove with his knee until its legs settled into place on the uneven boards. “Fits nice,” he said, straightening up and wiping the back of his neck with his sleeve.

She smiled politely. “Thank you.”

When the front door clunked shut and their boots clattered down the path to the van, she stayed in the hallway for a moment, listening to the silence return. It was a heavy silence—the kind that fills old houses in the hours after visitors have gone.

In the bedroom again, she stood in the doorway. The chest of drawers sat steady against the wall, its pale oak warming in the late afternoon light. The brass handles, dulled with age, caught a faint gleam where the sun caught them. It didn’t look like something new. It looked as though it had been here all along, waiting for her.

She crossed the room, her shoes silent on the carpet, and laid a hand flat on the top. The wood was smooth, cool beneath her palm, and a faint scent of beeswax drifted up.

The drawers had called to her from the moment she saw them at the auction house. She hadn’t been looking for furniture—hadn’t even planned to bid on anything—but there it was, tucked off to one side of the hall, half-hidden behind a large oak wardrobe.

There’d been nothing flashy about it. No carvings or glossy varnish. No sense of grandeur. But something about its quiet sturdiness had drawn her in.

“Solid,” the auctioneer had said when she asked. “Crafted well, though I couldn’t tell you the maker. A good piece for someone who likes things to last.”

And she did. She’d raised her hand when the bidding began, surprising even herself with the firmness of it. A couple across the aisle had whispered about its worth, their voices sharp and assessing, but she hadn’t cared.

She’d felt certain it was meant for her.

Now, in the hush of her own room, she opened the top drawer and pulled it out partway. The movement was smooth. The base was lined with floral paper, the edges faded and peeling slightly. She ran her fingers over the pattern, then slid the drawer closed again.

There would be a place for everything here.

In the top drawer: her wedding photographs. Black-and-white prints in stiff paper sleeves, their edges curling where small hands had thumbed them years ago. She’d keep them here, safe from the sun and dust.

In the second drawer: baby clothes. The tiny cotton vests and knitted booties her mother had made, too precious to part with even now.

In the third: letters. The ones her husband had written when he worked away, folded neatly, their envelopes smudged at the corners where she’d opened and reopened them.

And in the bottom drawer: important documents. Birth certificates. Insurance papers. Wills and bank slips. The sorts of things no one thinks about until they have to.

She imagined one day—years from now, she hoped—her children opening these drawers. Perhaps they would find her handwriting on a scrap of paper, or catch the faintest trace of her perfume clinging to a scarf. Perhaps they would sit on the edge of this very bed, turning over her belongings in their hands, trying to make sense of her life.

The thought wasn’t sad exactly. Just quiet. A truth she carried with her more often these days.

She closed the drawer and stepped back, wiping her hands on her skirt. The chest looked at home already.

Her fingers drifted to the edge of the bed. There was a faint dip in the mattress where she’d sat this morning, staring out the window at the bare branches swaying against a pale sky. The air felt stiller than it used to, as though the room itself was holding its breath.

A folded piece of paper lay on the dresser. She’d been working on it in fits and starts for weeks, never quite knowing how to end it. A letter for later. For one day.

Her eyes lingered on it for a moment, then shifted back to the drawers.

“One day,” she murmured, resting her hand on the top, “you’ll open these, and I won’t be here.”

She said it softly, not with fear but with a strange calmness.

The light was fading now. She crossed to the window and drew the curtains, the rings clicking faintly against the pole.

Tomorrow she would begin filling the drawers. For now, it was enough to know they were here, waiting.

Chapter 1

The room smelled faintly of beeswax, though no one had polished the drawers in years. The scent had settled into the wood itself, clinging to the fabric of the curtains and the cracks between the boards, as though her hands had been here only yesterday, rubbing the surface in slow, careful circles.

He stood just inside the doorway, his hand resting on the latch. The air felt close, heavier than the rest of the house, as if it hadn’t been stirred since the day she died.

Downstairs, a door clicked shut and his daughter’s laughter rang out—light and uncontained. For a moment it filled the house, then faded again into the softer hum of voices and the occasional clink of cups in the kitchen.

The chest of drawers sat in the corner, its pale oak catching what little light filtered through the drawn curtains. Dust had gathered along the edges, and the brass handles had dulled to a muted glow. It didn’t look like furniture so much as part of the room itself, as though the house had been built around it.

He crossed the carpet, his socked feet catching slightly on the weave, and rested his hand on the top. The wood was cool beneath his fingers. He pressed gently on the edge of the top drawer, felt the faint give of it, then let it close again without looking inside.

The bed creaked softly as he lowered himself onto it. The mattress dipped under his weight, and for a moment he sat motionless, hands resting on his knees.

This was where she had died. He didn’t know it for certain—no one had said so outright—but the thought had lodged itself in him the first time he stepped into the room. It was in the hush that hung here, in the faint dip in the pillow as though her head had only just been lifted.

The curtains, their flowers now faded to pale ghosts of colour, were drawn against the afternoon light. A thin band had found its way in, falling across the boards and catching on the brass handles. Dust floated there in the shaft, rising and settling with each tiny shift of air.

He had no real memory of her. Not the sound of her voice or the touch of her hands. Nothing of her face except what he’d seen in photographs. People had told him she was kind, quick to laugh, good with her baking. But that wasn’t knowing, not really.

The only thing he remembered—the one memory he was certain was his and not something absorbed from stories—was the day his father told him she had died.

He had been five. His father crouched in front of him, his hands on his small shoulders, saying words he didn’t yet understand fully but felt all the same. The weight of them sank into him even before their meaning did.

“She’s gone,” his father had said.

And he had screamed. Run circles around the living room, his hands balled into fists, hitting walls, kicking at the air. He remembered the strange, hot noise coming from his own throat. His sister—only three then—had stood still, wide-eyed, clutching a doll. She hadn’t understood why her brother was howling.

That memory lived sharp and bright, a shard of something he couldn’t dull. Everything before and after blurred.

His fingers hovered over the brass handles again.

There was a part of him that wanted to open every drawer, to rifle through whatever she had left behind. Another part wanted to leave them closed, untouched, as though that might somehow preserve her—or what little of her remained.

Downstairs, the kettle began its slow whistle.

His wife would be moving about the kitchen now, her steps deliberate, her voice low as she spoke to the children. She had been patient—more patient than he deserved. There were days she watched him like someone waiting for a door to open, but he couldn’t yet find the latch.

A floorboard creaked on the landing.

“Tea’s ready,” she said softly through the door.

He didn’t answer.

There was a pause, then the sound of her footsteps retreating toward the stairs.

He leaned back against the headboard, folding his hands in his lap. The weight of the house pressed in—not suffocating, exactly, but dense, as though every wall and floorboard was holding its breath.

In the garden below, a bird trilled, its song high and sharp, then stopped as abruptly as it had begun.

He imagined her in this room, though even in his imagination she was a blur—an outline shaped by other people’s recollections, not by his own.

Tomorrow, he told himself. Tomorrow, he might open the drawers.

For now, it was enough to sit here, to listen to the faint hum of voices from below and the soft tick of the hallway clock as the afternoon light slipped slowly across the room.