The Yellow House on County Road 6

Maribel hadn’t been back in over a year. The yellow house sat just off County Road 6, tucked behind an old cedar and wrapped in a porch her grandfather built by hand. The paint had faded a bit, but the wind still smelled like cottonwood and cut grass. She rolled down the window before she even parked.

Her cousin Luis waved from the porch, holding two glasses of iced hibiscus tea. “You made it,” he said, handing her one as she climbed the steps. “Wasn’t sure you would.”

“I almost didn’t,” she admitted, taking a sip. “But then I remembered the porch swing.”

They both looked at it: a little crooked, a little sun-bleached, but still solid. She sat first, the seat creaking like an old friend stretching after a long nap.

—

Luis had called the week before. Just a quiet message: Come if you can. No reason. Just miss you.

It had been a hard year — the kind where you stop doing things that make you feel like yourself. The kind where joy shrinks into a corner and stops raising its hand.

But this place... this place had raised her.

Her aunt came out a while later with a basket of tamales and two folding chairs. Luis’s younger sister, Alma, followed with a stack of paper napkins and a Bluetooth speaker already playing a slow bolero.

They didn’t ask questions. Not about work. Not about the move. Not about what happened with Mateo.

Instead, they ate. They told the same old stories — the one about Maribel getting stuck in the goat pen, the one about Alma sneaking extra sugar into the lemonade. And for the first time in months, Maribel laughed until she had to wipe tears.

—

Later, as the sun dipped low and painted the porch in gold, Luis said, “I’ve been coming out here more lately. Helps clear things up. Even when nothing really changes.”

Maribel nodded. “Feels like a place that still remembers me.”

“It does,” he said. “We do.”

The breeze picked up, tugging gently at her curls. She closed her eyes and listened: cicadas humming, the creak of the swing, the clink of dishes being cleared inside.

It wasn’t a big gesture. It wasn’t therapy or a breakthrough or a solved problem. But it was rest. It was company. It was enough.

When it was time to go, Alma hugged her tight and whispered, “Next time, don’t wait so long.”

“I won’t,” Maribel said, and meant it.

She drove back with the windows down and her heart a little less tangled.