Chapter Text
Evan went home.
Didn’t look back.
He got a bus and scammed his way back to his hometown, where he knocked on his mother’s door with an icicle in his chest and a stone of guilt in his gut.
Birchwood was always warm, even in the cold months.
So why was he shivering?
Every night Evan jolted awake from nightmares. Or at least he thought they were nightmares. He would go back to Birchwood but find it boarded up and dilapidated, long abandoned. And Evan would sit down on the stoop and cry.
He would wake up to find hot tears on his cheeks.
So he became a nanny.
Why, he couldn’t say.
He was still ridden with anxiety and the thought of having anybody’s-much less a child’s- life in his hands was terrifying.
But there was a nice single mother down the street who traveled a lot for work with two adorable little twin girls and Evan found himself as their full-time babysitter.
The girls, Ruth and Delilah, were sweethearts.
Ruth had an imaginary friend named Connor O’Malley and everytime she mentioned him, Evan felt that icicle stab further into his chest.
He still cried at night.
He had a scare with pneumonia in September and as he lay in the hospital, rueing over all he hadn’t done, Evan realized he had never told Connor he loved him.
Evan loved Connor.
He loved Connor.
When did he start loving Connor?
That weird, rude, Irish witch had wormed his way into Evan’s heart and Evan found himself sobbing grossly in his hospital bed, so much so that the nurse came in to make sure he wasn’t dying.
But he might as well have been, because he could never tell the man he loved that he loved him.
When October rolled around, the girls’ mother was going to be out of town on a business trip, and he was tasked with taking them trick-or-treating.
Ruth was going to be a pirate and Delilah was going to be a sorceress, just like in her favorite books.
Delilah demanded that they go out of town, where the people didn’t know them and would be ‘surprised by their cuteness and will give more candy.’
For a ten-year-old, she was shockingly clever.
So Evan consented and drove them to the next town over in his beat up Subaru. Ruth and Delilah instantly connected with a group of other kids, also chaperoned by a strung-out twentysomething.
These kids were natives to the town, and they were dead set on visiting the “spooky house.”
Evan turned to their chaperone. “Is- what’s the spooky house?”
“Oh, it’s totally safe,” he answered. “The guy who lives there is pretty friendly. The kids just like having somewhere mysterious, you know?”
Evan nodded and they agreed that Evan would accompany the group to the spooky house, with the town residents leading the way.
The kids marched proudly through town, ecstatic to be in charge for once. They turned onto a familiar wooded road and Evan felt a little bit of ice in his heart begin to melt.
As they walked down the road, memories came alive between the trees, as alive as the children darting around his feet.
Slowly, the house came into view.
Birchwood was lit joyously from the inside.
The roof was sagging and the paint was peeling, but it was as fresh in Evan’s memories as the first time he set eyes on the place.
There was a group of kids huddled on the porch and in the center was Connor, strumming his guitar with that stupid Target witch’s hat perched on his head.
As they grew closer, Evan could hear that voice he had been itching to hear for years.
“Run away, go find a lover;
Run away, let your heart be your guide.
You deserve the deepest of cover;
You belong in that home by and by.”
His voice was just like Evan remembered: high and sweet and pure. The music came from his soul and the kids didn’t seem to mind. They were busy chewing their candy apples.
The parents scattered around the porch, however, seemed to sense something. Every one of them had a large smile on their face, almost as if Connor’s voice was lifting ages of stress from their backs.
Evan could feel his own smile growing as well.
“You belong among the wildflowers;
You belong somewhere close to me.
Far away from your trouble and worry,
You belong somewhere you feel free.”
Evan could hear the anguish in his carefree music.
He finished the song and the parents around all clapped and went about collecting their kids.
Evan’s charges bravely approached the porch.
Connor looked at them first, handing each a homemade candy apple from the large tray next to his chair and grinning in that way of his.
Evan could feel the warmth of Birchwood spreading from his chest outward, melting the ice embedded inside that he had almost grown used to.
Finally Connor looked up.
They locked eyes and Evan knew.
“There you are,” Connor said, as if Evan had simply gone to another room for a minute and gotten lost. “I knew you’d find your way back.”