CHAPTER THREE — A House Full of Light
Elara
Before everything broke, our house was full of noise.
Not the chaotic kind, not shouting or disorder—but the steady, living sound of people who belonged to one another. Footsteps on the stairs. Doors opening and closing. Music drifting from Aaron's room, Lucas's laughter too loud, my mother calling for someone to bring her glasses she had misplaced again.
Light lived there too. Morning light through tall windows that never seemed to need curtains. Afternoon light that warmed the walls and made even ordinary furniture feel expensive. Evening light that softened everything, turning the house into a place that felt safe no matter how late it grew.
I didn't know how rare that was.
My father used to say a house only mattered because of the people inside it. I believed him then. I believe him now, too—but I also know how much walls can protect you when the world decides to turn sharp.
That house had watched me grow up. It held birthday dinners that stretched late into the night, school mornings filled with frantic searching for missing shoes, quiet evenings when my parents thought we were asleep and spoke to each other in low, affectionate voices.
I remember lying in bed sometimes, listening.
My father's voice was calm, assured. My mother's softer, but firm when it needed to be. They argued occasionally, of course—but even their disagreements felt safe. Temporary. Something that would always resolve.
That's what love looked like to me.
Not grand gestures or dramatic declarations. Just presence. Reliability. The certainty that someone would be there when the day ended.
On weekends, my father cooked breakfast for all of us. It was his ritual. He claimed it relaxed him, though the kitchen always ended up a mess.
"Elara," he'd call, "tell your brothers that if they don't come down now, I'm eating all the bacon."
Lucas would appear instantly. Aaron would take his time, stubborn even then.
My mother would lean against the counter, watching with that small smile she wore when she was happy but didn't feel the need to announce it.
"You spoil them," she'd say.
"They're mine," my father would reply simply.
I didn't realize how much of my sense of worth came from that word. Mine.
Not owned. Not controlled. Just… claimed with love.
I thought that was how families worked.
The house was also where my father worked late into the night sometimes, papers spread across the dining table, phone pressed to his ear, his tone patient but unyielding. He never raised his voice. He never needed to.
"Integrity lasts longer than profit," he told me once, when I asked why he refused a deal that would have made him richer faster. "Anyone can take shortcuts. Not everyone can live with them."
I admired him fiercely. Wanted to be like him. Wanted a life built on the same quiet certainty.
That certainty lived in the way he moved through the house, as though every room belonged to him not by ownership, but by care. Light followed him. Lamps clicked on before dusk settled, curtains were adjusted just enough to let the last glow linger. Even on days when clouds pressed low against the windows, the house never felt dim. It felt held.
At night, when the lights were lowered and the rooms softened into shadow, there was still warmth. A hallway lamp left on so no one walked in darkness. The porch light glowing long after my father returned home, as if welcoming him back even when he was already inside. I never questioned it. I never wondered why we were never afraid of the dark.
He believed light was a responsibility.
"If you can see clearly," he said once, replacing a bulb that hadn't yet burned out, "you don't trip over what's in front of you."
I didn't understand then. I thought he meant the stairs. The furniture. The physical things that cluttered a life. Now I know he was talking about more than that.
Light was how he loved us. Through preparation. Through foresight. Through the quiet insistence that nothing be left neglected for too long. When my mother forgot to turn off a lamp, he didn't scold her—he only smiled and did it himself. When Aaron complained that his room was too dark to study, my father brought in another lamp without being asked. When Lucas slammed his door after an argument, the light beneath it remained on, a small promise that anger did not mean abandonment.
Even my room was brighter because of him. He insisted on a desk by the window, said I needed natural light if I wanted to think clearly. "Don't study in shadows," he told me. "They make everything feel heavier than it is."
The house glowed in ways I never counted. Not because it was grand, but because it was attentive. Because someone cared enough to notice when a bulb flickered, when a room felt too quiet, when darkness lingered longer than it should.
I thought light was permanent.
I thought it came with walls and windows and careful routines.
I didn't know then that light could leave a house even when every lamp was still working.
I didn't know how quickly warmth could turn into memory.