The House

My husband Michalis died in 2017. He left me the house he'd grown up in, fifteen minutes from my village, on a hill above the old road. He'd restored it in the nineties when we were first married, the two of us on weekends with not enough money and more confidence than skill. I know every room. I know the window that sticks in humidity and the step that sounds hollow and the corner of the garden where the rosemary grows wild because neither of us ever found the time to manage it.

I haven't been able to sell it. I've tried twice to start the process and stopped both times before speaking to anyone. I tell myself I'm waiting for the right moment, which I know is not entirely true.

I also haven't been able to live there. I went for a week the summer after he died and found I couldn't stay past the third day. Nothing was wrong with it. Everything was exactly as it should be, which was the problem.

My sons think I should decide. I think they're right and I think this isn't a decision I can make by thinking about it. So for now the rosemary grows and the window sticks and I drive past it sometimes on the old road and I don't stop.

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