Once Upon a Lullaby Lane (Once Upon a Holiday Story)

1. Chapter 1

Chapter 1

42 Lullaby Lane stood against a backdrop of redwoods and pines in all its dilapidated glory. The last time Colt had laid eyes on it, the main kitchen window had been boarded up, a front step caved in, and the fence more an idea of jagged posts than anything else. Surely somewhere in the far back of his memory there existed an image of this house looking…maybe not new , but normal . Like any other house along the Lost Coast that had a history and a family who loved it.

Had they loved this place? Maybe Dad had, at some point. Or maybe he’d loved the memory of it from when Mom was still around.

Five minutes.

He’d promised himself five minutes to sit in the car and collect himself, and those minutes were up.

Mechanically, he slid out of the car and nudged the door shut. He hadn’t brought his things with him. He’d sooner sleep in the back of the sedan than spend another night in this house.

Colt scuffed his boots across the muddy ground, exhaling a puff of breath visible in the early winter chill. There weren’t really summers in Gold Moon Bay; just winter and some conglomeration of fall-slash-spring that were only really differentiated by the amount of rainfall. A lot in the fall. A fuck-ton in the spring. Winter was a guessing game.

The key felt as heavy in his hand as the dread in his chest. The yard wasn’t nearly as overgrown as he expected it to be. Maybe Dad had finally caved and started paying someone to upkeep it. Colt noted the stacks of plastic tubs on the porch, no doubt stuffed full of junk. About fifty feet off the gravel driveway sat an old camper. He suspected that, too, served as little more than a storage unit. It was only a matter of time before the mess inside started spilling out.

He unlocked the front door and let it swing open. Something it didn’t used to be able to do; there was always too much shit blocking the way. You pushed it open and squeezed in and prayed nothing fell.

A mostly empty hall greeted him. Well, it might’ve cluttered by most peoples’ standards, but it was the emptiest Colt could remember seeing it since he was a kid.

No, wait…

The hall hadn’t been cleaned out so much as evacuated, things shoved aside into adjoining rooms to make space. People—paramedics—had needed in and out in a hurry. Needed more than a few treacherous, narrow paths to maneuver. Dad was—had been—a tall, sturdy man. Getting him onto a stretcher and out of the house couldn’t have been easy.

Every instinct in Colt’s animal brain told him to march right back to the car and leave. To tell Kate to just set the fucking place on fire for all he cared; he didn’t want it. Not the peeling paint, not the rusted porch swing. Not the ghosts and memories and heaps of boxes and collectibles and books because “Maybe they’ll come in handy” or “I couldn’t pass up a sale” or “It’s my own damn business what I spend my money on, Colt, so leave me alone.”

Now Dad was dead. He wasn’t there to protest anymore. But it meant Colt was left with the wreckage.

Colt pressed on down the hall. The first archway to the left led to the living room. Or, at least, there was a living room buried under there somewhere along with a few good Christmases and birthdays.

Onward still.

Kitchen: devoid of (most) of the rotten food, though the place still reeked of mold. Cupboards overflowed with dishes and rags and cute dish towels for every season that did nothing but collect dust. Stacked serving bowls and plates and trays as though they even had a free table to put them on. As though guests could ever fit in there to have a meal, let alone cook.

Bathroom: probably one of the cleaner rooms in the house. Not to say it was clean , but you could open the door, there were no stacks of magazines or crates or unopened mail and Amazon packages. Small blessings.

The den, though…

“The den” was a misnomer. It hadn’t been a den in decades. When Glenn Grieves filled his own upstairs bedroom to the brim, he’d relocated down to this space where he only ever maintained a small corner barely big enough for his bed.

Colt got as far as the doorway and had to stop. There, as in the hall, things had been recently disturbed. Towers of boxes were shoved as far back as possible against the far walls, heaps of clothes trampled on the floor… This was all Dad’s mess, but Dad’s mess was meticulous in its placement, everything Tetris’d together to form an impenetrable fortress. He wouldn’t have left it like that.

He stared at the bed crammed into the corner. The blankets looked clean, the bedding made. Pillows fluffed. That didn’t look like his dad’s doing, either.

Aside from EMTs and probably some kind of building inspector or law enforcement to make sure the place was structurally sound enough for people to get in and out, who else would’ve been in here? He couldn’t imagine they’d have stopped to straighten up. There was Kate—the social worker who’d spent the last few years working with Glenn—but he knew damned well she’d never stepped inside.

His hand flexed on the door knob. He backed out. For some reason, that lone little clean spot in the room made his stomach turn more than the hoard did.

He didn’t manage much further in his exploration. Couldn’t even look sidelong at the stairs or think about what lay at the top of them. He came to see what he was dealing with, and he had.

Now, he just needed to figure out what the fuck to do about any of it.

***

The motel reeked of musty, dirty laundry, but it still beat the house on Lullaby Lane. Paying for a week or two at the good ol’ Motel Honeybee, no matter the noise or the stench or the shady dealings in the parking lot, was preferable to even thinking about staying in his childhood home. Going back to it at all was bad enough.

The visit had left Colt’s stomach uneasy and racked with nerves; no dinner for him tonight. Kate called while he downed a subpar mug of coffee—compliments of the motel—and he answered only because she didn’t believe in leaving voicemails. She believed in persistently calling back until she got an answer.

“Just wanted to check in, make sure you got into town okay,” she said cheerfully.

Colt didn’t mind her, really. She was a nice lady, but her friendly demeanor sat in such stark contrast with his mood that it made him instantly tired. He’d spoken to her a grand total of four times on the phone—five now—but they hadn’t yet met in person.

He assured her he was fine, settled in, and she sounded surprised when he mentioned he’d already dropped by the house . A fair enough reaction; she’d asked to be there when he went.

He hadn’t wanted her to be. He didn’t wanted anyone to be.

“I just took a glance around,” he said, cramming down the inkling of guilt. “Didn’t get in-depth into anything.”

“No, yeah, sure, it’s fine!” Kate assured. “I mean, it’s your place now. Oh—did you get a chance to meet Sera?”

“Who?”

“Sera. I’m pretty sure I mentioned him; he’s the one who, um, found Glenn.”

He’d gotten the call at two a.m. one morning from a doctor at the hospital. Everything beyond I’m sorry to tell you that your father has passed was little more than a blurry mess. But if he though really hard, yeah, he guessed he vaguely recalled Kate mentioning that it was a friend of his dad’s who’d found him.

“Right. Uh, no. Was he supposed to be there?”

“Well, he lives there, so I thought—”

“Sorry, he lives there?”

“No, no—not in the house! God, no. Just on the property. He’s been there a few years helping Glenn out with the place. Brought him to all his appointments when he couldn’t drive anymore. Nice guy.”

Colt’s head spun. It was weird enough to think that his dad had maintained any kind of friendship with his lifestyle, but to think he had someone living there on the property… More than that, someone he’d never mentioned to Colt. Not once. Okay, so they didn’t talk often, maybe every couple of months on one of their birthdays, but if this guy had been around for years… Where the hell was he even staying if not in the house?

The camper.

Not just for junk storage after all.

“Right.” He swallowed back the lump of undefined emotion in the back of this throat. Something to cough up later and try to examine, but he couldn’t stand the taste of it just now.

“Anyway, I know he wants to meet you, and I’m sure he’ll be a big help in getting the place sorted.”

The visceral reaction to snap at Kate and tell her he didn’t need this guy’s help, that no one n eeded to be in that house, was real and raw, and he had to bite the inside of his cheek to keep it in check. She’s trying to help. That’s all.

Kate went on for a few minutes longer, something about paperwork and meeting up to make funeral arrangements. All things Colt listened and made note of despite barely speaking a word. As soon as they hung up, his phone buzzed with a text message.

Kate Leonardo

Here’s his number if you want to get in touch! xx

Attached was a contact for Sera Howell.

“There’s a thing I won’t be doing,” he mumbled. Even on a good day, he couldn’t message a stranger to strike up a conversation. One that knew his dad, knew about their way of life? He’d sooner have swallowed his phone.

He finished off his now-cold coffee, washed up, and collapsed into bed, still trying to shake the jumble of irritation and confusion clinging to his skin like moisture from the lukewarm shower. Only once his nerves settled some did he reach for his phone again, pulling up a number he hadn’t even officially added to his contacts.

It rang three times before a gruff voice answered, “Y’ello?”

“Hey, Uncle Rob.” A pause. “It's Colt.”

“Yeah, hey, hey. How’s it going? You get there okay?”

Traffic leaving the San Francisco airport had been a nightmare, coupled with the hassle of renting a car and making the four hour drive north. He could complain about that, or how the flight itself had been delayed so many times it arrived three hours after its original schedule. But he’d only spoken to Rob a handful of times since he was a little boy. Any attempt at small-talk between them has been stilted and awkward and forced.

“Trip was fine,” he offered instead.

“That’s good.” Another pause. “So, uh… You seen the house yet?”

“For a bit. I didn’t stay long.” Colt’s gaze rolled to the ceiling. His eyes traced the cracks in the off-white plaster like hairline fractures in bone.

“How bad is it?”

“Uhh… I’ve got my work cut out for me.”

“No shame in just having someone else clean the place out, Colt.” Uncle Rob’s tone was gentle, reassuring, and Colt could appreciate the sentiment behind it if nothing else. “Spare yourself a lot of headache and heartache, I’d bet.”

“I could also just have it condemned and bulldozed to the ground,” Colt said with the casual air of someone who’d put serious thought into doing just that. He ran a hand down his face. “Maybe I’ll reach a point where I’ll hire a company to come in and help, but starting out, I feel like it’s something family should handle.”

And then he let that sentence hang there, heavy. Let the meaning behind it sink in. He hadn’t outright asked Uncle Rob to come out to California to face all this mess, but he’d dropped enough hints. Colt didn’t want or need some weird guy living in a trailer or a social worker to help; he wanted his family. He wanted the only person who might’ve understood even a fraction of this convoluted grief.

Uncle Rob shifted uncomfortably on the other end of the line, cleared his throat, and skirted right around the unspoken plea.

“Just so long as you take care of yourself first and foremost. You know where I am if y’need me.”

Colt closed his eyes.

Rob and Glenn Stafford had been inseparable growing up, close enough in age that half the people who met them would’ve guessed they were twins. Uncle Rob was a staple in Colt’s earliest memories. Colt can’t place exactly when he stopped coming around, but he could make a few guesses that’d probably be spot-on. Dimly, he remembers Grandma Belle—before she’d passed some twelve years ago—often reaching out to Rob when she couldn’t seem to get through to her younger son. “Glenn doesn’t care what I have to say, but he always listens to his big brother.”

Yeah, well, that hadn’t been the case for a long time. No doubt the contention between them played a part in Uncle Rob moving to Utah while Dad stayed right there in the family home while letting it disintegrate around him.

If he asked Uncle Rob directly to come out to help, would he reluctantly agree? Or would he fumble around for an excuse to slip out of it?

“Yeah, thanks. I’ll keep you updated.”

He said his goodbyes and hung up. Pinched the bridge of his nose. Sighed.

He’d spoken to Rob no more than four times in the last week, and the first time had been to give him the news that his little brother Glenn was dead. They’d sat there awkwardly on the phone, both muffling the occasional sniffle, two near-strangers trying to process how they felt about losing someone they loved but had been, even at the best of times, complicated . Each time Colt had reached out to him since then, some small part of him hoped that, just maybe, they’d find some kind of connection so that he needn’t feel so damned alone in the complexity of his grief.

So far, no luck.

He was on his own.