Free Confessions by Ryne Douglas Pearson Page A

because this was my plan before hearing Eric’s confession.
    I am moving forward.
    I step from the car, leaving my duffel in the back seat next to the visible half of the storm door. Neither unpacking, nor work, is a priority for me now, and I move away from the car and around the house. Little has changed about it from my childhood days spent here. Some weathering of course, its wood siding graying a bit each winter, but so much remains that was here when I was young. The rowboat upturned beneath the overhang of the woodshed. The tetherball pole just back of the house, its rope frayed, a deflated lump of yellow rubber at its end. Even the woods seem to have stood still in time, no taller my mind tries to convince me. No older. No nearer either apex or demise. Just a thin stand of pines nestled near the building, their limbs intertwined as they climb skyward, weaving a lush green canopy. I follow a short path through the shade beneath and stop where the woods end.
    A loon sweeps down from the sky and skims across the waters before me, Arrow Lake a still mirror reflecting the far shore. The bird sweeps along and pulls up, wings pumping gently and carrying it off over the trees, its graceful flight seeming to draw my eye over the symmetry of green earth, shimmering water, and sky tinged purple by the setting sun.
    I do take it all in. I breathe the air, chilled and scented fresh. For a while I just stand there, next to the house on the lake, and I feel a calm settle over me. It competes with the weight I have carried these past few days. A burden which has anchored itself to dark places within. I do not know if the serenity which fills me has dislodged the aguish, but its coming mutes all that I have allowed to afflict me, and after a few minutes I smile. The expression true, and warm, and so very, very good.
    *  *  *
    The storm door is on, the last screw in its hinge set in the glow of the porch light. Day has disappeared beyond the far shore, the only hint that it was ever here the thin blue outline tracing the shadowed pines in the distance. Stars hang over the lake and dance in duplicate on its gently rolling surface.
    I stand just inside the door, cup of coffee in hand, staring out at the settling night. Though it robs form and feature from the land, an exquisite mystery lives in the dark that comes with it. The wind competes with no beautiful bounty for attention when the light is gone, whispering its song through trees and over rocks. Creatures dart about unafraid of attention from man. Just as we close our eyes to sleep, the sun goes down and all things about the earth become their own dream.
    Inside, though, it is bright and warm. Two logs have just begun to fully catch, tendrils glowing black and orange creeping over them, scales of bark falling away with flourish, crackling as if conjured from a Norman Rockwell canvas. I turn away from the door to savor this idyllic sight, the hearth blazing in the corner of the gathering room, the largest, most inviting space in the modest house. The kitchen and dining area spill freely into it, their own space defined by function, not walls. Beyond, down a short hallway, are two bedrooms, a closet sandwiched between them which has never been used as such. From my earliest memory it held no clothes, no pile of toys, no overflow of plain stuff which could find a home nowhere else. It has never been a place to keep things.
    For no reason I wander away from the front door and down the short hallway, past the bedrooms, to the closet at the end. The old sign still hangs from a tack set into the door’s solid wood. It is no more than a square of cardboard suspended from a length of yarn. Words are printed neatly in fading marker on each side. On one it says ‘Keep Out’. On the other it says ‘Keep Out.’
    I smile as I turn the sign to sample the identical warnings, the biting extent of my mother’s humor. But the admonition was ironclad—this door was not to be opened. By anyone