Leonardo Dicaprio Cheers

Chapter 6 — Echoes in the Morning

Dawn came thin and gray, the air damp with the scent of cedar.
Thomas packed two suitcases before the light was even fully up.
“By noon we’ll be in town,” he said.
But the car refused to start. When he turned the key, the engine whirred once and went still, as if listening.

Margaret stood on the porch with Josephine’s coat in her hands.
The trees were motionless. Even the lake seemed to be waiting.
She could see their reflections in the glassy water—three figures where there should have been two; a faint outline between her and Thomas, smaller, blurred by ripples.

“Maybe we stay one more night,” Thomas whispered, surprising himself with the suggestion.

Miles away, Ada Larkin loaded her truck with feed for her hens. The sky over the lake had a strange, low shimmer—like heat rising from stone though the air was cold. She thought of the new family that had moved into the old Grant place.

Last night she’d heard music drifting over the fields, thin and broken, the kind of tune a child might hum in her sleep. When she’d looked out her window, she could swear the farmhouse windows were glowing from within, each one pulsing in rhythm.

This morning the air felt different: heavy, stretched. Even the crows had moved on.
She decided she’d drive over after breakfast, just to “check the fenceline,” though curiosity was the truer reason.

Josephine sat cross-legged on the living-room floor, tracing the pattern of light that filtered through the curtains. Where her finger passed, the dust swirled into perfect little circles.
She heard a voice that sounded like her own say, They don’t remember right.

“Who?” she whispered.

All of them, the voice answered.

Margaret felt a faint vibration through the boards beneath her feet—the same pulse that had carried through the attic. She touched the wall and felt it flutter, almost like a heartbeat.
“Thomas,” she called softly. “I think it’s breathing again.”

He found the old radio in the corner, the one that had first played the lullaby.
It was unplugged. Yet when he lifted it, a single note drifted out, sustained and pure. He set it down quickly.
Every door in the hallway had opened a few inches.
Light leaked from each room, a muted, golden glow. For a moment he thought he saw movement inside—just the edge of someone stepping away from the doorway.

He turned toward the kitchen, but the house seemed to turn with him. The hall stretched longer, the corners deepened into shadow, and the smell of rain grew stronger.

Ada parked her truck by the fence. No wind, no birds. Yet the grass bent gently toward the house as if drawn by a slow current.
She climbed halfway up the porch steps, hesitated, and called, “Anyone home?”

From somewhere inside came a sound like a chair sliding across the floor—slow, deliberate.
Then the faint laughter of a child, echoing through the open door and out across the field.

Ada backed away without meaning to. The laughter followed her all the way to the truck, growing quieter only when she crossed the property line.

By dusk, the house had gone still again. They ate in silence. No radio, no hum.
Josephine asked if the girl in the attic would be lonely now that they were leaving.
Margaret froze, spoon mid-air. “Who told you that?”

“She did,” Josephine said. “She says the house only keeps what it remembers.”

Thomas met Margaret’s eyes. Outside, the lake reflected the sky in perfect mirror image—except for one difference: in the reflection, the farmhouse windows were all dark.