The Hollow Between Them
Morning arrived slower than usual.
The house felt drained — as if all the air had been pulled out during the night.
Elena moved through the kitchen with calm precision, her suitcase already by the door. She made breakfast the way her mother liked: soft eggs, burnt toast, a cup of coffee that was mostly milk.
Mara sat at the table, barely touching her food.
"You don't have to go today," their mother said, her voice fragile and hopeful.
Elena smiled, but it didn't reach her eyes. "If I wait, I won't leave at all."
The father nodded absently from his seat, pretending to read the newspaper. His knuckles were white around the mug. He hadn't slept. He'd been awake since before dawn, watching the light stretch across the yard and touch the hollow tree.
It hadn't stopped creaking all night.
When Elena went upstairs to pack the last of her things, Mara followed her.
The room they'd shared since childhood felt smaller now.
Drawings still covered the walls — sketches of forests, faces, strange patterns that only made sense when viewed from far away.
"Do you have to move that far?" Mara asked quietly.
Elena folded a sweater, placed it on top of her bag. "It's only two towns away."
"That's far enough."
Elena looked at her then — really looked.
Her gaze was soft, but behind it, something unreadable shifted. "You'll visit."
Mara laughed under her breath. "Of course. Unless you vanish again."
She said it like a joke. It didn't sound like one.
Elena's hands froze for a moment on the zipper of her bag. Then she said, "I won't."
And that should have been enough.
When the car arrived, the father insisted on carrying her things. He moved mechanically, his every gesture practiced — the way people move when pretending they aren't breaking.
The mother cried quietly into her scarf.
Elena hugged her, whispered something soft and private into her ear.
When it came to Mara, the hug lingered too long. It wasn't the embrace of goodbye, but of recognition — like they both knew this wasn't an ending but a pause.
"Write to me," Mara said.
Elena nodded. "I will."
But as she stepped into the car, Mara thought she saw her sister glance at the woods — just once — and flinch.
The car disappeared down the road.
By afternoon, the house felt too large, too quiet.
The father stood by the window, looking out at the hollow tree. Its bark shimmered faintly, the way wet wood sometimes does in sunlight.
"She'll be fine," the mother said, trying to believe it.
He didn't answer.
Three weeks passed.
Then a month.
Elena wrote letters at first — short, polite things about her new apartment, her job, the neighbors. But as the weeks stretched on, the letters grew stranger.
They arrived at odd hours.
The handwriting wavered — as if written in a moving car, or by someone whose hands wouldn't stay still.
Her words grew detached:
"Sometimes, I wake up and I can't tell which side of the mirror I'm on."
"The trees here sound like ours did."
"There's something I can't quite remember, but I think it's remembering me."
The father stopped reading them after the third one.
The mother pretended everything was fine.
And Mara — Mara began dreaming again.
In the dreams, she and Elena stood before the hollow tree.
Its roots spread wide like veins.
Elena's face was pale, her voice faint.
"You shouldn't have let me go," she said.
"They don't like it when we leave."
When Mara woke, her hands were dirty.
Black dirt — the kind that clung too easily, the kind that smelled faintly of ash.
By the sixth week, no new letters came.
Just silence.
Until one night, the phone rang.
The mother answered, relief spilling into her voice.
But the call wasn't from Elena.
It was from a town two hours away — a police officer speaking gently, asking if she could confirm a name.
Something had been found in the woods near an abandoned house:
a bag, a sketchbook, and a page half-burned at the edges.
On it, a single line written in trembling ink:
"I think the tree followed me."