Porchwood Hollow

A Story from Porchwood Hollow

On a shelf beneath the attic window sat two very old books.

They had been there so long that neither could remember which had arrived first.

One was bound in faded burgundy cloth, its gold lettering nearly worn away. Its spine leaned slightly to the left, and several pages had loosened from years of being opened, closed, and opened again.

The other wore a soft green cover, faded at the corners, with a small stain along its edge where someone had once set down a cup of tea.

They were not particularly valuable books.

Nobody had ever suggested placing them behind glass.

But the Keeper had carried them upstairs years ago, brushed the dust from their covers, and placed them side by side beneath the window.

And there they remained.

Through summers that warmed the attic rafters.

Through winters when snow gathered against the glass.

Through the quiet coming and going of everything below.

One evening, when the last of the autumn sunlight slipped across the shelf, the burgundy book spoke.

“I believe I’m losing myself.”

The green book did not answer immediately.

It had learned that some statements needed a little room.

“How so?” it finally asked.

“Pages,” said Burgundy. “I’m missing pages.”

Green considered this.

“Many?”

“I don’t know. That’s rather the problem.”

Burgundy shifted against the shelf.

“There are places where one chapter ends and another begins, and I cannot remember what happened between them.”

“That happens.”

“It shouldn’t.”

“Why not?”

“Because it’s my story.”

Green was quiet.

Outside, the branches scraped softly against the attic window.

“Yes,” Green finally said. “I suppose it is.”

—

For several nights, Burgundy worried over the missing pages.

It counted chapters.

Examined its binding.

Tried to remember sentences that had once seemed terribly important.

There had been a chapter about beginnings.

That one remained.

The opening pages were full of possibility, written in the confident language of things that had not yet learned how complicated life could become.

There were promises.

Plans.

People who seemed certain to remain until the final chapter.

Burgundy remembered loving those pages.

They had been read so often that the corners had gone soft.

Then came chapters that had required more courage than anyone reading them might have understood.

Years of work.

Doors that opened.

Doors that closed.

Responsibilities arriving before there had been time to prepare for them.

There were pages filled with names, dates, appointments, departures, and returns.

Others contained little more than the ordinary business of getting through a day.

Burgundy had never considered those particularly interesting.

Now it wondered whether they had been important after all.

“What if I’ve lost the best parts?” it asked one night.

Green turned its attention away from the moonlit window.

“Why do you suppose the missing pages were the best?”

“Because I cannot remember them.”

“That seems an unusual qualification.”

Burgundy bristled.

“You know what I mean.”

“I do,” said Green. “But I wonder if you do.”

—

Green had missing pages of its own.

Its first chapter had been torn long ago.

Several others had become so thin and fragile that the words were almost impossible to read.

One entire section had suffered water damage.

And near the middle was a place where someone had pressed a flower between the pages.

The flower was gone.

Only its faint outline remained.

Burgundy had always thought the damaged section rather sad.

“Doesn’t it bother you?” Burgundy asked.

“What?”

“Not knowing what was there.”

“Sometimes.”

“And what do you do?”

“Nothing.”

“Nothing?”

“Occasionally I remember something. Occasionally I don’t.”

“That cannot possibly be enough.”

Green gave a small, papery sigh.

“I spent a very long time believing that, too.”

—

Years earlier, when both books had still been downstairs, people used to take them from the shelf.

Some read them all the way through.

Others opened them only long enough to find a particular passage.

There were readers who turned their pages carefully, smoothing each sheet before moving on.

And there were readers who folded corners, left crumbs between chapters, and abandoned them face down on tables.

Neither book had especially enjoyed that.

But they remembered the readers.

A child who sounded out difficult words one syllable at a time.

An older woman who returned to the same chapter every winter.

A man who once opened Burgundy, read three pages, and sat staring out the window for so long that evening came before he remembered to turn another.

Burgundy had never known what he was thinking.

It had spent years wondering.

“Perhaps he disliked the story,” Burgundy said.

“Perhaps.”

“Or perhaps it reminded him of something.”

“Perhaps.”

“Or someone.”

Green was silent.

Burgundy looked toward the darkening window.

“I wish I’d known.”

Green shifted gently beside it.

“Would knowing have changed what happened?”

“I don’t suppose so.”

“Then perhaps he was entitled to keep that part of the story for himself.”

—

That thought troubled Burgundy more than it expected.

It had always believed stories belonged to the books in which they were written.

What was the point of having pages if the most important things could happen somewhere beyond them?

But Green remembered the little girl who used to read aloud to her grandmother.

The girl would stumble over words, begin sentences again, and sometimes invent entire passages when she grew tired.

Her grandmother never corrected her.

She simply listened.

Years later, the girl returned alone.

She was grown by then.

She opened Green to the same chapter and began reading quietly.

Halfway down the page, she stopped.

Her hand rested against the paper.

And for a little while, she cried.

There was nothing written in Green’s pages about the grandmother.

Nothing about the afternoons they had spent together.

Nothing about the voice that was no longer there to listen.

Yet somehow the story had held all of it.

Green had thought about that for years.

It had begun to suspect that a book contained more than the words printed upon it.

—

Winter arrived.

The Keeper brought the residents of Porchwood Hollow upstairs, and the attic filled with the gentle noises of their seasonal return.

There were small footsteps.

Blankets being unfolded.

The occasional disagreement about where something belonged.

Someone laughed.

Someone dropped a teacup.

Someone insisted the teacup had been improperly situated.

Through it all, Burgundy remained preoccupied.

It had begun trying to reconstruct its missing pages.

Perhaps there had been another chapter about happiness.

Perhaps a chapter about the person it might have become if one small decision had been different.

Perhaps an entire section explaining why certain things had happened, why others had not, and whether any of it could have been prevented.

Each possibility grew more elaborate than the last.

Soon Burgundy was no longer remembering its story.

It was inventing the pages it believed ought to have been there.

And the invented pages were always extraordinary.

There were perfect decisions.

Conversations in which everyone said exactly the right thing.

Doors that opened at precisely the proper moment.

People who understood one another without needing explanations.

There were no wasted years.

No misunderstandings.

No unfinished plans.

No ordinary Tuesdays that disappeared without leaving anything remarkable behind.

For a little while, Burgundy found these imagined pages comforting.

Then one evening it grew very quiet.

Green noticed.

“What is it?”

Burgundy hesitated.

“I don’t recognize the story anymore.”

—

For a long time, neither book spoke.

The attic settled around them.

Below, the house made the familiar sounds of winter.

Pipes clicked.

Wind moved beneath the eaves.

Somewhere a clock counted the hours.

At last, Green said, “May I tell you something?”

Burgundy nodded.

“I used to wish my first chapter hadn’t been torn away.”

“Naturally.”

“I wanted to know how I began. I thought that if I understood the beginning, everything that followed would make sense.”

“Did you ever find it?”

“No.”

“Then how did you stop wondering?”

“I didn’t.”

Burgundy turned slightly.

Green continued.

“But eventually I began paying more attention to the pages that remained.”

“That sounds rather simple.”

“It was not.”

Green’s voice softened.

“I found passages I had overlooked because they weren’t particularly dramatic. Small kindnesses. Ordinary afternoons. People who stayed when staying was difficult. People who left and still mattered. Things that ended without being failures.”

Burgundy listened.

“And I discovered something else.”

“What?”

“There were pages I had mistaken for empty simply because nothing extraordinary happened on them.”

—

Burgundy thought about its own ordinary chapters.

The years it had hurried through.

The pages about meals prepared and laundry folded.

About driving familiar roads.

About keeping promises when no one was watching.

About sitting beside someone who was ill.

About paying bills, tending gardens, repairing what had broken, and making room for the people who needed it.

There were chapters about children growing taller.

About parents growing older.

About friendships changing shape.

About mistakes that could not be undone but could, eventually, be understood.

There were pages on which nothing had gone according to plan.

And pages that contained only the small victory of having made it to morning.

Burgundy had passed over so many of them.

They did not seem like the sort of chapters anyone would choose to read twice.

But now, looking back, Burgundy could see how much life had happened there.

Not between those pages.

On them.

It had simply failed to recognize the story while it was being lived.

—

“Do you think,” Burgundy asked one morning, “that a book can be complete even if some of its pages are missing?”

Green considered this carefully.

“I don’t think complete means what we once thought it did.”

“What does it mean, then?”

“I’m not certain.”

Burgundy sighed.

“You’re becoming rather unhelpful.”

“Age will do that.”

They sat quietly for a moment.

Then Green added, “Perhaps a story doesn’t have to contain every possible chapter to have been worth telling.”

Burgundy looked down at its fraying binding.

“And the missing pages?”

“Some may have been lost.”

“Yes.”

“Some may never have been written.”

Burgundy was quiet.

“And some,” Green continued, “may have belonged to other people all along.”

—

Spring approached slowly.

The sunlight began reaching farther across the attic floor.

The residents stirred with anticipation.

Soon the Keeper would open the Green Door again, and the Hollow would return to its warmer days.

One afternoon, the Keeper climbed the narrow staircase and entered the attic.

She paused at the shelf beneath the window.

There sat the two old books.

Faded.

Worn.

Imperfect.

She lifted Burgundy first.

Its cover was soft beneath her fingers.

A loose page slipped slightly from the binding.

The Keeper tucked it gently back into place.

Then she opened the book.

Not at the beginning.

Not at the end.

Somewhere in the middle.

She read for a while.

Her expression changed.

First a small smile.

Then something more thoughtful.

She turned another page.

And another.

Finally, she closed the book and held it against her for a moment.

“Well,” she whispered. “I’d forgotten about that.”

She returned Burgundy to its place beside Green.

Then she descended the staircase.

Neither book spoke until her footsteps had faded.

At last, Burgundy said, “She didn’t seem to mind.”

“Mind what?”

“The missing pages.”

“No.”

“She didn’t even look for them.”

“No.”

Burgundy considered this.

“She remembered something.”

“Yes.”

“But it wasn’t written there.”

Green looked toward the sunlight.

“No,” it said softly. “It wasn’t.”

—

Years later, Burgundy would still occasionally wonder about its missing pages.

There were chapters it wished it could revisit.

Questions it would never answer.

Passages that might have made more sense if the words between them had survived.

But it no longer spent every quiet hour searching for what was gone.

Instead, it learned to notice what remained.

The worn corners where someone had returned to a favorite passage.

The small stain left by an ordinary afternoon.

The faded words that had comforted a stranger.

The places where the binding had been repaired because someone had decided the book was worth keeping.

And beside it, Green continued to rest patiently, its own missing pages held quietly among the ones that survived.

One evening, as the last sunlight crossed the attic shelf, Burgundy spoke.

“I think I understand now.”

Green waited.

“I kept believing the missing pages would explain my life.”

“And?”

Burgundy looked toward the Green Door.

Beyond it were the stairs, the house, the porch, and all the small ordinary things that had happened while nobody thought to write them down.

“Perhaps they weren’t missing,” Burgundy said.

“Perhaps they were simply the ones I had finally learned I no longer needed to read.”

Green said nothing.

It did not need to.

Outside, the first evening birds began calling from the garden.

The light softened.

And beneath the attic window, two old books rested side by side.

Neither was perfect.

Neither contained every answer.

Both had been loved.

And both, despite everything they had lost, still had a story worth keeping.

For a life is not made whole by having every question answered.

Sometimes it is made whole by finally loving the pages that remain.