Part 3 of The Memory Orchard : The Door That Waited | Desire Lines
DL - The days in the orchard didn’t pass, they unfolded, like pages in a book whose story no longer obeyed time.
Liora returned each morning to the house with no clocks.
Not because she expected change, but because something deep within her wanted to stay still.
To listen.
To remember without rushing away from what hurt.
Noah though she hadn’t said his name aloud yet, was always in the same place:
The armchair, the window, the shadowed hush of yesterday’s dust.
But today, the chair was empty.
Instead, a faint golden line traced the edge of a door near the back of the house.
A door she hadn’t noticed before.
One that hadn’t been open.
Or perhaps… had never even been there.
Her feet didn’t ask her permission, they moved.
She pushed it slowly.
Inside, the walls were painted in memory.
Literally.
Each brushstroke held moments. Smiles. Arguments. Letters never sent.
And in the very center stood a table with two cups of tea.
Still warm.
He stood by the far wall, tracing his hand along a painted memory,
the day they ran through the orchard as children, chasing shadows and laughing like summer had no end.
Liora swallowed the ache rising in her chest.
“You kept it,” she said.
He didn’t turn.
“I didn’t know how to let it go.”
She walked to the other side of the room. The walls began to whisper.
Not in sound.
In feeling.
One section was cold, like regret.
Another warm, like forgiveness waiting.
“I thought forgetting you would make it easier,” she whispered.
“I thought remembering you would break me.”
He turned to her. Eyes tired, but open.
“Maybe we’re meant to carry some things. Not bury them.”
A long silence held the air. Not tense. Not soft.
Simply real.
Then, Noah did something she hadn’t expected.
He opened a drawer beneath the painted wall and handed her a brush.
“What’s this?”
“A place for a new memory,” he said. “Only if you want to.”
Liora stared at the blank panel near the door.
It terrified her.
And yet…
She dipped the brush in soft yellow paint, and with a trembling heart, began the first line of something new.
And the door behind them, the one that had waited, stayed open.