They arrived just before dusk, the old station wagon pulling gently into the driveway as golden light stretched across the façade of Sunday House.

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Three generations, drawn together for a birthday—though each had come with quiet reasons of their own. Margaret, the grandmother, wore her favourite scarf and the air of a woman who’d lived a full life but felt time quickening. Louisa, her daughter, was a high school art teacher, all sensible shoes and fatigue tucked behind her eyes. And Thomas, Louisa’s eleven-year-old son, carried a sketchbook and a restlessness he didn’t understand.

 

They were welcomed by the stillness Sunday House always offered, as though the house itself was pausing, holding space for them to exhale.

 

On their first night, Thomas wandered into the garden just beyond the back veranda—drawn not by any noise, but by the hush. There, towering and grand, stood a cluster of ancient elm trees, their leaves catching the last of the daylight like a prism of glass.

 

He noticed something odd: the trees didn’t feel silent. They felt aware.

 

He returned the next morning, dragging Margaret along by the hand. “Listen,” he whispered.

“What am I listening for?” she smiled.

 

But she stopped. The breeze stirred, and the elms rustled—not like wind through branches, but like conversation. A lullaby in a language they didn’t quite know.

 

Margaret closed her eyes. “I used to climb a tree just like this when I was a girl.” Her voice caught. “I hadn’t thought of it in fifty years.”

 

Over the next few days, Sunday House became more than a charming stay—it became a bridge. The three of them gathered daily beneath the elms: Thomas drawing, Louisa reading aloud, Margaret napping or telling stories no one had heard before.

 

One afternoon, Louisa, alone beneath the canopy, saw something impossible: a flash of herself as a child, running barefoot in summer, the sound of her mother’s laughter echoing through the branches. No hallucination—just a feeling so vivid it held weight.

 

Later that night, as they ate pasta in the garden lit by fairy lights and citronella candles, Thomas said quietly, “I think the trees show us memories. But only the good ones. Only the ones we forget to remember.”

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Margaret nodded slowly. “Maybe that’s what age is. Not growing old. Just growing away from your memories.”

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“But here,” Louisa said, voice soft, “it’s like we’re walking back to them.”

​

On their final evening, the three of them sat beneath the largest elm in silence. Margaret pulled a pen from her purse and began writing in Thomas’s sketchbook. When she finished, she handed it to him.

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“Read it when you need to find me again,” she said. “Because you will. And Read it Right Here!”

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They left the next morning, mist curling along the path as if trying to keep them just a moment longer.

In the guest review, they left no list of highlights, no description of the linen or the sound system.

 

Just this:

“There is an elm tree in the garden that bends time. Sit beneath it, and you’ll remember what you thought was lost.”