KATHLEEN McCLEARY

The house was yellow, a clapboard Cape Cod with a white picket fence and a big bay window on one side and Ellen loved it with all her heart. She loved the way the wind from the Gorge stirred the trees to constant motion outside the windows, the cozy arc of the dormers in the girls’ bedroom, the cherry-red mantel with the cleanly carved dentil molding over the fireplace in the living room. She had conceived children in that house, suffered miscarriages in that house, brought her babies home there, argued with her husband there, made love, rejoiced, despaired, sipped tea and gossiped and sobbed and counseled and blessed her friends there, walked the halls with sick children there, and scrubbed the worn brick of the kitchen floor there at least a thousand times on her hands and knees. And it was because of all this history with the house, all the parts of her life unfolding there day after day for so many years, that Ellen decided to burn it down.