The House on Maple Road: Letting Go and Finding Home

“You just have to let it go, Ola. We can’t afford to keep it.”

Jake’s voice echoed through the dusty kitchen, bouncing off the faded wallpaper I once picked out with Mom. My name is Olivia, but everyone calls me Ola—the only thing left unchanged in a world that was shifting under my feet. I pressed my palm to the old Formica counter, feeling years of family dinners, birthday cakes, and midnight talks seep through my skin. My pregnant belly brushed the edge, a new life in the midst of so much loss.

I stared at Jake, his jaw tight, his hands shoved deep in his jeans pockets. Outside, September sunlight spilled through the window, painting everything golden and bittersweet. Our realtor, Mrs. Turner, waited politely by the front door, pretending not to notice the tension vibrating between us.

“It just feels wrong,” I whispered, the words catching in my throat. “Like we’re erasing him. Like none of this ever mattered.”

Jake’s shoulders slumped. “Ola, your dad’s gone. We need a bigger place before the baby comes. We’re not erasing him—we’re building our own life. You said yourself the commute’s killing you. We can’t keep paying two mortgages.”

I flinched. Logic had always been Jake’s weapon. But logic didn’t explain why my heart ached every time I drove down this road, past the cornfields and the new houses with their garish blue and red roofs. Someone had put up a chain-link fence where Mrs. Cooper’s willow tree used to stand. The world I grew up in was vanishing, one For Sale sign at a time.

The door creaked and Mom’s old tabby cat—now half-wild—slipped inside, winding around my ankles. I bent to scoop her up, tears stinging my eyes. “What about the cat, Jake? She has nowhere else to go.”

He sighed. “Ola, we can’t have pets in the apartment. You know that.”

My voice broke. “She was Dad’s. He loved her.”

He looked away.

We walked the property one last time. As I stood beside the rusted mailbox, I remembered the fight Dad and I had last Christmas—me shouting about how he should move in with us, him refusing to leave his home. I never got to apologize. Now, here I was, ready to sell the only thing he’d ever wanted: this patch of land, this creaky farmhouse, his whole world in a few acres.

“Do you remember that summer when the well dried up?” I asked, half to myself. “Dad made us haul water from the neighbor’s. I thought he was the meanest man alive.”

Jake smiled, softening. “Yeah, and you swore you’d move to the city and never look back.”

I laughed—a choked, watery sound. “Funny how things work out.”

The sun was sliding lower, setting fire to the fields. Mrs. Turner coughed delicately. “I have an offer from a couple out of Cincinnati. They want to tear it down, put up a new build.”

My knees nearly buckled. “Tear it down?”

Jake squeezed my hand. “Ola…”

I shook him off, anger flaring. “So that’s it? All these years, all these memories—just bulldozed?”

Mrs. Turner blinked, uncomfortable. “You could wait, see if someone wants to keep it as is, but… it might be a long wait. And the price would be lower.”

We needed the money. The baby was due in three months. Our cramped apartment in Columbus was already closing in, noisy neighbors on every side. But the thought of someone razing my childhood home gutted me.

I wandered upstairs to my old bedroom. The wallpaper was peeling, little blue stars I’d stuck up as a girl still clinging stubbornly to the ceiling. In the closet, I found a shoebox of letters—Dad’s handwriting, neat and careful. He’d written me notes every birthday, even after Mom died. I sat on the floor, reading them, sobbing so hard I shook.

Jake found me there, kneeling beside me. “Ola, I know this is hard. But we’re going to make new memories. For us. For the baby.”

I shoved the letters at him, desperate. “But what if he forgets? What if our little girl never knows where she came from?”

He wrapped his arms around me. “She will. Because you’ll tell her. You’ll show her what matters.”

Darkness crept in. I stood at the window, watching fireflies spark over the corn. The world was changing, and I was being forced to change with it.

In the end, we signed the papers. Mrs. Turner hugged me, awkward and brief. Jake loaded the last box into the car. I took one last look at the house—peeling paint, sagging porch, heart and history in every splintered board.

The drive back to Columbus was silent, except for the cat meowing in her crate. Jake squeezed my hand as we hit the interstate.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

I stared out at the dark, swallowing tears.

“I don’t know,” I whispered. “How do you say goodbye to everything you’ve ever known?”

Now, weeks later, I still wake up some mornings thinking I hear Dad’s boots on the stairs. I wonder if our little girl will ever understand the world we left behind. Or if I’ll ever stop feeling like I left a piece of myself back on Maple Road.

Do we ever really let go of the places that made us? Or do they find ways to stay with us, even after the last light goes out?