Coming Home to Greenleigh

Chapter 26

Break My Fall

[Lyrics courtesy of Google!]

We enter the room

You're bright the darkness my love

In moments with you

There is no end to me or beginning to you


We move to the floor

A purpose combined my love

Like the motions of stars

Our dynamic symmetry combines


Break my fall

I found what was missing inside you

Break my fall

Na na na na na na na

Break my fall

I found what is missing inside you

Break my fall

Na na na na na na na


Always with you

Connected by blood my love

A purpose fulfilled

You're my light in this dark, dark world


This unspoken within

I feel complete my love

The moments apart

I'm craving your light in the dark


Break my fall

I found what is missing inside you

Break my fall

Na na na na na na na

Break my fall

I found what is missing inside you

Break my fall

Na na na na na na na

[Written by Brian Wayne Transeau, Tijs M. Verwest • Copyright © Universal Music Publishing Group]

***

This is it, Elisabeth thought.

She looked about her at the front room. Normally, it was cluttered and messy, dust balls catching at the corners of the furniture, piles of paper sliding off the old oak-top desk. But right now, it was as neat as a pin.

In other words, it had been emptied of every bit of its identity. No more Burnham clutter.

The papers were gone. The dust had been swept away. She could even see that the tops of the ancient, heavy drapes had been feather dusted for cobwebs.

That would have been Gunnar's handiwork—she couldn't remember the last time she'd wielded a feather duster. Perhaps never. And to be fair, she didn't know if Gunnar himself had done any dusting. He seemed to have friends in every conceivable profession and owning every conceivable vehicle—what he wasn't willing to do, he always found someone willing to donate.

The furniture was all there. The auctioneer had priced some of the more valuable items, saying that he would conduct private showings of the house after Thanksgiving. The realtor thought the house would show better with the old furniture in it, so she'd shrugged and given the auction house man a key.

Thank goodness she would be gone. She didn't want to see any of the activity. Somehow, her conscious mind could handle what she was about to do, but she didn't know if she could actually stand to see if happen.

Elisabeth wandered aimlessly from room to room, trying to remember all the instructions. Gunnar had told her repeatedly that she needed to make lists, take pictures with that new phone, record what was there and what wasn't, keep an inventory—all of it blurred into an impossible jumble of chaos in her mind. She paused in each doorway, staring blankly at the room before her, trying to grasp at why she was there, what she was looking at, and what on earth all of it meant.

Instead, she remembered odd bits and pieces of things—middle school science projects spread out on the dining room table, the Burnham family bible with its pages of births and deaths, her mother and father guffawing loudly over Lucille Ball's antics on the black-and-white television with the rabbit ears and twisted bits of foil. She remembered that there was once a green shag rug in front of that television set—where had that gone? There was also a hideous gray vinyl arm chair that had sat in the same room. She couldn't remember what had happened to it, but she felt as if she had spent her entire childhood in that chair in front of Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck.