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The U-Haul's taillights glow cherry-red in the January dusk as Travis leans against its cold metal side, breath fogging the air. Behind him, the old Proffitt house stands hollow-eyed—windows stripped bare, front door ajar like a slack jaw. Charlie crouches to scoop a handful of wet leaves from the rain-slick driveway, the same ones they'd raked into mountains every autumn since '79.
"Remember when Greg face-planted right into Mrs. Hendricks' prize marigolds?" Joey snorts, kicking at a desiccated oak leaf still clinging to the cracked concrete.
Greg rubs the faint scar above his eyebrow. "You pushed me, dickwad."
Travis watches their breath mingle in the icy air, the familiar bickering threading through the groan of distant pickup trucks climbing Highway 101. The scent of rotting kelp and diesel fuel—Elk Cove's permanent cologne—clings to the peeling siding. Inside the empty living room, ghostly squares mark where their mother's paintings once hung. Charlie presses a palm to the sticky sap-stain on the back porch railing, the one from when Joey tried to build a "fort" with stolen two-by-fours in '84.
"Think the new people'll find Dad's Playboys under the basement stairs?" Greg stage-whispers.
Travis flicks a pinecone at him. The thud echoes weirdly in the barren yard. No more fighting over the tire swing. No more hiding beer cans in the rhododendrons. The U-Haul's engine ticks like a bomb.