I’m a 38-year-old mom of two, and for almost ten years my husband and I have lived in the kind of quiet Midwestern neighborhood where everyone knows everyone—or so I thought.
Everyone except Mrs. Halloway.Her house, a sagging old Victorian with peeling paint and a leaning porch, sat at the end of our street like a secret. She never waved. Never joined block parties. Her gray hair was always wound in a tight bun, her eyes fixed on the ground as she shuffled to the mailbox in worn slippers.
Neighbors whispered their own versions of her story:
“She lost her husband.”
“No, it was a child.”
“She hasn’t opened that door to anyone in decades.”And yet, on my late-night dog walks, I’d sometimes hear piano music float from her windows—slow, mournful notes that tugged at something deep inside me. The melody felt familiar, though I couldn’t place it. A motionless tabby cat always stared out from the parlor window, like a sentinel guarding a kingdom of dust
Two months ago, just after midnight, flashing red and blue lights jolted me awake. An ambulance idled in front of her house. Without thinking, I ran outside barefoot.Paramedics emerged with a gurney. Mrs. Halloway lay pale and trembling beneath the thin blanket.
As they wheeled her toward the ambulance, her eyes snapped open and locked on mine.
Her frail hand shot out, gripping my wrist with surprising strength.
“Please…” she rasped, “…my cat. Don’t let her starve.”Before I could answer, she was lifted inside and the doors slammed shut.
For the first time in twenty-six years, her front door stood ajar.
I hesitated only a second before stepping in—and gasped.The air smelled faintly of cedar and old sheet music. Dust floated like tiny ghosts in the thin moonlight. But the house wasn’t abandoned. It was… preserved.
Every room was frozen in time:
- A dining table set for three, plates still gleaming beneath yellowed glass covers.
- A child’s sneakers by the stairs, small as the day they were last worn.
- Sheet music scattered on the grand piano—the very song I’d heard at night.In the center of the parlor sat the cat, a plump gray queen perched beside a framed photograph:
Mrs. Halloway, a smiling man in uniform, and a laughing little boy—all from decades ago.
A faint breeze stirred the sheet music, revealing the title of the song: Lullaby for Thomas.
I realized with a shiver it was the same melody I remembered from my own childhood—a regional recital piece my mother once played.The next morning, I visited Mrs. Halloway in the hospital.
She was weak but lucid. Between breaths, she told me the story she’d kept locked behind that door:
Her husband and young son had died in a car accident on a rainy night. The table was set for the dinner they never returned to. The piano piece was the lullaby she used to play for her boy.
For twenty-six years, she couldn’t bear to move a single thing.
I promised to care for her cat.
And when she finally came home—after a long stay and with community help—the first thing she asked was for me to play the piano with her.That night, the melody no longer sounded lonely. It sounded like a door opening, at last.