Hearth’s Edge Horror as Charred Family‑Tree Branches Drop into the Fierce Flames
I was standing in the garage when I got the call. The air smelled like motor oil and cold dust, the kind that settles in after November has taken hold. My phone buzzed in my back pocket, and I didn’t even look at the screen before answering. I just had a weird feeling. That’s how it started. My sister’s voice on the other end, flat and tight, telling me to come to Mom’s house. She didn’t say more, and I didn’t ask. I just wiped my hands on a rag and got in the truck.
My mom lived in the same house we grew up in. The one with the green shutters and the uneven walkway. The hearth was always lit in the winter. She said it made the house feel alive. I remember being a kid, sitting in front of it in my pajamas, watching the flames move like they were dancing. That fireplace had seen everything—Christmases, fights, birthdays, and long silences.
When I pulled up, I saw my brother’s car already there. And my sister’s. I parked behind them and walked in without knocking. The door was unlocked, like always. The smell hit me first—burnt wood and something else, something older. I saw them in the living room, standing near the fireplace. My brother was holding a cardboard box, and my sister had this expression on her face like she was about to cry but refused to let herself.
On the coffee table were stacks of photo albums. The old kind with sticky plastic pages and faded corners. Some were already open, and I could see pictures of us—kids in Halloween costumes, Dad grilling in the backyard, Mom holding my youngest cousin at the hospital. My brother didn’t say anything. He just started tossing some of the photos into the fire. One by one. They curled at the edges and then disappeared into the flames.
I didn’t understand at first. I just stood there, watching. My sister eventually muttered something about “cleansing” and “letting go,” but I wasn’t really listening. I walked over and picked up a photo that hadn’t been touched yet. It was me and Dad on my tenth birthday, sitting on the porch with a cake between us. I remember the icing was blue, and he tried to write my name on it himself. The letters were crooked, but I loved it.
I held that photo for a long time. My fingers were shaking, and I didn’t know if it was anger or sadness or both. My brother told me we didn’t need to keep this stuff anymore. That it was time to move on. That Dad didn’t deserve a shrine.
That’s when it hit me. This wasn’t just about cleaning out old things. This was about erasing him. My father. He had died four months earlier, and it hadn’t been peaceful. He’d been arrested for something none of us saw coming. Something that made the news. Something that made neighbors cross the street when they saw us. He never came home after that. He died in custody, and we were left with the mess. The shame. The questions. The betrayal.
I had kept quiet after it all came out. I didn’t defend him, but I didn’t condemn him either. I just didn’t know what to believe. He had always been good to me. Strict, yes. But present. He came to my high school games. He helped me fix my first car. He taught me how to build a fire in that very hearth. And now, everything he’d done, everything we had—my siblings wanted to burn it all down.
I argued. Not loudly. Just enough for them to hear how much it hurt. My sister told me she couldn’t stand seeing his face anymore. That every picture felt like a lie. My brother said holding on to the past was like holding on to poison. I didn’t say much after that. I just sat on the floor and flipped through a photo album while they kept feeding the fire.
I stayed that night. I couldn’t leave. I slept in my old room, though it was mostly empty now. The posters were gone. The bed creaked more than I remembered. I stared at the ceiling and thought about the man I thought I knew and the man the world claimed he was. I thought about how even now, I wanted to believe he hadn’t done those things. But belief wasn’t proof. And silence didn’t mean innocence.
In the morning, I went downstairs early. The fire had died down to soft embers. I crouched in front of it and looked at what was left—ash, bits of charred paper, half a metal frame from a picture that didn’t burn all the way. I poked at it with the fire poker. Then I went into the kitchen and made coffee like I used to when I was in college and came home for weekends. I stood at the kitchen sink and watched the backyard. The swing set was still there, rusted and leaning.
My siblings came down later. No one talked much. We packed up the rest of the albums. Some went into more boxes for the fire, and some I quietly slipped into a bag I brought with me. I didn’t want to fight anymore. But I also couldn’t let it all go. Not like that.
A few weeks later, I started scanning the photos I had taken. I didn’t put them up anywhere. I just kept them on a folder on my computer. Sometimes I look through them late at night when I can’t sleep. I don’t know what I’m looking for. Maybe some kind of pattern. Maybe a sign I missed. Maybe just a reminder that once, things felt okay.
I’ve tried to talk to my mom about it, but she shuts down. She lives in a small apartment now, near my sister. She keeps busy with church and baking, and when I visit, we talk about the weather or recipes. Never Dad. It’s like he never existed. Like that entire branch of our family tree has been snapped off and tossed into the fire. And maybe that’s what they needed to heal. But I can’t do it that way.
There was a night not long ago when I lit a fire in my own fireplace. I sat there alone, holding one of the photos. It was black and white, from before I was born. Dad and my grandfather, standing by a car. Both smiling. I held it over the flames for a moment. Just long enough to feel the heat on my knuckles. But I didn’t drop it. I put it back in the box.
I don’t know what that says about me. That I still want to remember. That I can’t pretend it was all bad, even if some of it was unforgivable. Maybe it’s weakness. Maybe it’s something else. But I’ve come to accept that grief isn’t always clean. Sometimes it burns unevenly. Sometimes it leaves parts of you untouched, and other parts scorched beyond recognition.
What I’ve learned is this: you don’t have to carry the whole tree. But you don’t have to burn every branch either. Some things you keep, not because they’re perfect, but because they remind you of who you were before everything changed. And sometimes, that’s enough to keep going.
