Word Count: 299
He was little, probably around five years old but looked younger because he was so small. Thin, bony, his eyes ringed with blue-gray circles that gave him a haunted and haunting look. He never spoke to me but would nod sometimes in response if I saw him outside in his yard. His name, I learned later, was Tommy.
He was one of those kids you see without seeing. Who take up a corner in the memory of your mind that you aren’t really aware of because it’s such a small part of your busy life. When he was killed by a hit and run driver right outside of his house no one saw what had happened. No one knew how long he’d lain out there. No one missed him at home until hours after dinner, sometime after it’d already grown dark.
The police went around asking questions. I was embarrassed to say that I couldn’t recall the last time I’d seen him, didn’t know what time or even how he came home from school. The policeman shook his head sadly. No one else knew anything either it seemed. Just the loss of one little boy who was no more than a flick of life in the edges of the neighborhood. If I tried hard, I could almost recall the face of his mother. Couldn’t even do that with his dad.
We all went to the funeral service and to the house afterwards. My wife brought a couple of casseroles and a pie. We found that Tommy had two older sisters, as hollowed and haunted and silent as ghosts.
The family lived there a few years after Tommy was killed. And then sometime in the middle of winter they left.
I don’t know who lives in that house now.
