The House We Couldn't Leave

Sofi knew something was missing.

Not something. Someone.

It came to her the way a skipped stair catches your foot in the dark—sudden, silent, and almost gone before you know it.

She had been playing with her doll on the windowsill of the library, brushing its yarn hair with a broken comb, when the name drifted into her head like a feather.

Lina.

She dropped the comb.

The name hurt.

Not like a cut. Like a bruise you forgot was there until someone poked it.

She looked around. The tall windows, the cold floor, the deep quiet of the morning. The others were downstairs. Reya had said she wanted to draw. Aria was counting again. Tara hadn't spoken all day. Mina had gone to talk to Mr. Calden, though Sofi hadn't seen him since the night Lina vanished.

Vanished.

She didn't even remember the moment it happened. Just that Lina was with them one second. Then gone.

And no one cried.

Not even Mina.

Not even Sofi.

That night, she sat on her bed with her doll tucked under her arm. She called it Pip, though sometimes it felt like the name was wrong. Sometimes it felt like the doll had its own name, but wouldn't tell her.

"Do you remember her?" she whispered.

The doll didn't answer.

She pressed her cheek to its soft fabric head.

"Lina," she said. "That's the name. She was our friend. Wasn't she?"

The doll's stitched eyes stared forward. Silent.

Sofi frowned. Her fingers curled around its cotton hand. The house was quiet—too quiet. Even the creaks were holding their breath.

"I think she's still here," Sofi said.

Then she laughed a little, but it felt strange. Wrong.

"Don't you think we should be sad?"

The doll's head tilted.

No, not tilted. It had always been that way. Probably.

She lay down, hugging Pip to her chest, but sleep felt far away.

She kept thinking about Lina's bed.

It was still made.

Perfectly.

No wrinkles, no indent. As if Lina had never slept there.

But she had. Sofi knew she had.

Hadn't she?

Sometime around the middle of the night, Sofi woke up to the sound of humming.

A tune she didn't know.

But she was humming it.

Softly. As if trying to remember something that hadn't happened yet.

She sat up. The doll lay on her chest, looking up at her.

The hum continued, low and slow.

She clapped her hand over her mouth. The sound stopped.

But her lips were still.

The doll tilted again.

She stared at it, breath caught in her throat.

"I don't know that song," she whispered. "I don't—"

The humming started again.

This time it wasn't coming from her.

It was coming from the doll.

Sofi dropped it and scrambled back. The doll rolled to the edge of the bed and stopped.

The tune kept going, soft as breath.

Then silence.

She reached for the candle on her nightstand, hands shaking. Lit it. The flame flickered, casting long shadows over the room.

The doll sat motionless.

Maybe it had been her imagination.

Maybe she was tired.

But the hum still echoed in her mind.

And the strange thing was—it sounded like something Lina used to sing.

Didn't it?

She didn't know anymore.

The next morning, Sofi asked Tara, "Do you remember Lina's song?"

Tara blinked. "What song?"

"The one she always hummed. The one that went like this—" and Sofi hummed the fragment she remembered.

Tara stared at her for a moment, then shook her head.

"I don't think Lina ever sang."

"She did," Sofi said firmly. "I remember. She sang it while brushing my hair once. And when we sat near the nursery. And—"

She stopped.

Because the rest of the memory slipped away like water through cupped hands.

At breakfast, she tried again.

"Mina, do you remember Lina's doll?"

Mina looked up from her tea. "Lina didn't have a doll, Sof."

"She did," Sofi insisted. "It had a red ribbon and missing buttons for eyes."

Mina's expression darkened. She glanced at Tara, who remained silent, gaze fixed on her plate.

"Sofi," Mina said gently, "You're thinking of Pip. That's yours."

"No," Sofi whispered. "It's not."

The rest of the day blurred.

The others wandered the house. Aria scribbled notes in chalk. Reya spent hours staring at a blank page. Tara sat by the window and didn't speak once.

Sofi stayed in the nursery.

She sat in the crib next to the empty one and clutched the doll close.

She watched shadows move where nothing moved.

She listened to the walls breathe.

And she wondered why no one cried for Lina.

That night, Pip was gone.

Sofi tore through her sheets, flung open drawers, checked under her bed.

Nothing.

She raced into the hallway.

The doors stretched longer than usual, like the hall was growing.

Far, far down at the end, she saw movement.

A shape.

Small.

Carrying something in its arms.

It turned the corner and vanished.

Sofi ran.

She didn't call out. Didn't want the shape to know she was following.

Her feet slapped against the cold floor, breath hitching, heart hammering.

She turned the corner—

And saw the doll.

Sitting on the stairs.

Alone.

Its head turned slightly toward her.

She picked it up carefully.

It felt colder than before.

She held it close and whispered, "What are you trying to tell me?"

The doll didn't answer.

But in the candlelight, she noticed something.

A thread along the seam of its side. Red. Like embroidery.

She pulled it gently, and the edge opened.

Inside, something crinkled.

Sofi reached in with trembling fingers and pulled out a folded scrap of paper.

It read:

"Don't let them forget me."

Signed: Lina.

Sofi sat on the stairs for a long time.

She cried, finally.

But not because Lina was gone.

She cried because no one else remembered she was ever real.