What We Bring, What We Leave

“There are houses you walk into with hope, and houses where you leave it folded in tissue on the doorstep.”

The Mallorys’ house was exactly as I remembered it from our last visit six weeks ago—small, low-slung, with weathered brick walls and eaves that sagged slightly at the corners, like the mouth of someone too emotionally drained to summon even the pretence of a smile. The red clay roof tiles bore the faded ghosts of their former colour, bleached in patches to a weary rust. The aluminium guttering bore long, dark streaks from months—perhaps years—of slow neglect, etched like old tears down the face of the building.

A narrow strip of concrete still bisected the front verge with the insistence of a former order, but the surrounding ground had long since given itself over to weeds. Hardy, opportunistic plants had taken root in every crack and crevice, colonising the space with a quiet sort of triumph. Yet even through the disorder, traces of effort remained—broken lengths of plastic garden edging peeking through the foliage like bones, and a brick border sunk unevenly into the dirt, half-swallowed by creeping couch grass. It was a yard with a memory, still murmuring the remnants of someone’s earlier vision, now abandoned not with defiance but with fatigue.

This wasn’t the chaos of carelessness. It was the slow, inevitable entropy of lives burdened by more urgent concerns. The kind of unspoken surrender that doesn’t announce itself but accumulates over time until it feels too heavy to reverse.

I eased the Corolla to a stop at the kerb, carefully avoiding a glittering scatter of broken glass near the storm drain—likely the remnant of some late-night misadventure that had nothing to do with the Mallorys themselves but still made its mark on their boundary. I switched off the ignition. The engine’s hum faded into silence with the abruptness of a sentence cut short.

Neither of us moved at first. Evelyn sat quietly, her eyes fixed on the house, unreadable. We didn’t speak, not yet. We simply looked.

“I'll bring the dress,” I said at last, breaking the fragile quiet as I turned in my seat to reach into the back. I lifted the tissue-wrapped parcel from where it had waited—light in weight but heavy with meaning—and laid it gently across my lap.

I’d wrapped it that morning with care bordering on reverence. Clean white tissue, crisp and smooth, folded in neat thirds and tied with a soft white ribbon—not flashy, not festive. Something simple, something dignified. I’d wanted it to feel like a gift, not an obligation. Like honour, not pity. I smoothed the wrapping again, brushing out a minor crease with my fingertips, as though that small act might somehow communicate the hours of labour and intent behind it. It mattered, this care. Especially here.

Dignity could hide in the smallest things. In a well-wrapped dress. In not flinching at the broken garden. In knocking gently.

Evelyn nodded beside me. Her expression remained composed, but there was a restraint to her posture that hadn’t been there earlier—a held-backness I wasn’t sure how to address, not without peeling back layers neither of us had the time or energy to unpack on someone else’s front path.

“Ready when you are,” she said, and I knew she meant it.

We stepped out of the car together, shoes crunching softly on the verge, and began walking up the uneven path. The cracked concrete beneath our feet was flanked on both sides by tufts of grass that had long since overstepped their boundaries, stretching inward like green fingers attempting to reclaim forgotten ground. They muffled our footfalls, making our approach feel almost reverent.

The house ahead didn’t stir at our arrival. Curtains hung motionless in the windows, and no dog barked from within. It was the kind of stillness that didn’t feel deliberate so much as dulled by exhaustion, as though the whole property existed half a beat behind the rest of the world. A place paused—not broken, not ruined, just... paused. Waiting for something to begin again. Or perhaps simply to end more quietly.

A faint but persistent tang of mildew lingered in the air around the front entrance—the particular kind of old dampness that seeps quietly into a home over time, weaving itself into curtain hems and carpet underlay, curling into the timber of skirting boards and window frames, finding comfort in the undisturbed spaces behind cupboards and under floorboards. It was the scent of something long neglected, long endured. I resisted the instinct to wrinkle my nose or draw too deep a breath, though it made little difference.

I raised my hand and knocked—soft but firm, a sound designed to be heard without startling, to announce our presence with gentle certainty rather than demand.

We waited.

The silence that followed was not entirely still. It had texture, layers. Beneath the quiet, I could just discern the low, persistent hum of a television—muted dialogue rising and falling, punctuated by the tinny burst of a laugh track too perfectly timed to be real. It was the sort of programme meant to imitate cheerfulness, to provide the illusion of company in rooms where loneliness had been living rent-free for too long.

Seconds ticked by. Then more. The longer we stood there, the more the silence seemed to shift in quality—growing not just in length, but in weight. A dull ache of waiting began to press into the hollow of my chest, where nerves and habit pooled together like cold water.

I glanced at Evelyn, who returned the look with calm patience. She had the serenity of someone who knew that sometimes visits began like this—slowly, hesitantly, with more resistance than welcome. But she also knew how to wait. It was one of her spiritual gifts.

Just as I began to shift my weight—raising my hand again with the intention of knocking once more, a touch firmer this time—the front door opened.

It moved slowly, grudgingly, as though the door itself resented the interruption.

Shayna’s mother stood in the threshold, her figure half-lit by the dim hallway behind her. The low light framed her in something approaching a halo, but there was nothing angelic in her posture, nothing luminous in her gaze. She wore fatigue like a garment she no longer noticed.

Her hair was pulled back into a limp, barely-held ponytail, strands escaping to cling damply to her neck. It looked unwashed, unbrushed, styled only by necessity. The cotton dressing gown she wore hung open at the front, its once-bright floral pattern faded to the pale blush of something long buried at the back of a linen cupboard. Beneath it, a pair of well-worn black leggings bore the unmistakable stretch-marks of repeated use—creased at the knees, thinning at the thighs, the fabric beginning to betray the slow erosion of daily wear.

Her expression was neither warm nor cold. Just... blank. Her eyes passed over us as though cataloguing faces in a crowd, without recognition or inquiry. They were eyes that had grown used to seeing too much, and no longer knew where to focus. Not defensive. Not hostile. Simply distant, as if whatever had once connected her to the social script of welcoming visitors had long since unravelled.

She didn’t speak. She didn’t move to let us in.

She simply stood there, arms slack at her sides, staring.

And in that brief, motionless moment, I felt something old and sharp stir in my chest—an echo of the helplessness I used to feel watching women like this from afar, knowing there were no scriptures, casseroles, or schedule adjustments that could patch what life had torn open.

I summoned my best smile—the one I reserved for crossings like this, where no welcome waited on the other side of the bridge. It was a diplomatic expression, finely tuned through years of visiting teaching visits that teetered on the threshold between duty and discomfort. The kind of smile that said, I come in peace. I see you. I’m not here to judge.

“Good morning,” I said, letting the warmth in my voice bloom slowly, intentionally. “We're just on our visiting route today. I'm Sister Smith, and this is Sister Baker. We've brought something for Shayna.”

I extended the wrapped parcel with both hands, holding it like a quiet offering—something sacred, but unassuming. The tissue paper made a faint rustling sound as the breeze caught at its edges, a whisper of gentleness amid the dense quiet pressing in around the front step.

Shayna’s mother didn’t answer right away. Her body stayed still, her expression unmoving save for a subtle tightening around the mouth—a flicker of thought crossing behind her eyes as if she were deciphering whether this required emotional expenditure she could spare. Then, wordlessly, she reached out and took the parcel from my hands.

There was no thank you, no nod of acknowledgment. Just the simple motion of transfer. Her gaze dropped to the bundle in her arms, frowning at it slightly, as though trying to interpret some hidden meaning from the tidy folds and simple bow—as if suspecting a trick, or simply unsure what to do with such a gesture when her hands already felt full with the unseen burdens of her home.

When her eyes returned to mine, they remained unchanged. Unreadable. Still distant, still dulled by the kind of exhaustion that isn't about sleep, but survival.

Behind her, a quiet shadow stirred.

Shayna appeared at the edge of the hallway like a breath made tangible—so light in her movements she seemed more suggestion than presence. Her bare feet made soft, frictionless sounds against what looked to be a scuffed stretch of linoleum, and the oversized hoodie she wore overwhelmed her frame so completely it looked almost like she’d curled up inside it for warmth and never quite come out. The sleeves hung far past her hands, swaying like empty sleeves on a scarecrow, her arms lost somewhere deep inside.

Her hair spilled forward in tangled strands, curtaining her face so effectively that it became difficult to tell whether she was looking at us or past us. Her entire posture radiated hesitation—a kind of lingering at the edge, as if she’d only partially emerged from the interior world she inhabited and was prepared to retreat again at the slightest provocation.

She didn’t greet us. Didn’t move forward. Just stood there, quietly folded into herself, partway behind the doorframe like a child surveying a space to determine whether it was safe to step into. Like she wasn’t quite convinced she was expected—or permitted—to be here at all.

I cleared my throat gently, summoning the voice I used with the Young Women on Sunday evenings. A tone finely balanced between softness and sincerity, with just enough optimism to suggest possibility without tipping over into pressure.

“We thought she might like to wear it to the youth devotional next week? If she's planning to come along with the other girls her age.”

Nothing changed. No flicker of emotion crossed Shayna’s features, no shift in stance to indicate the suggestion had registered as anything beyond background noise. Her eyes remained steady, searching, as though she were quietly waiting for something to happen—or perhaps simply enduring it, with no real hope that it would ever feel different.

Her mother answered instead.

“She’ll see,” she said, the words dry and worn thin, delivered in a tone so flat it was almost featureless. A shrug accompanied the response—brief, functional, like someone passing a salt shaker across a table out of reflex rather than intent.

The silence that followed our exchange seemed to cling to all of us like wet wool—heavy, scratchy, and inescapably damp. It soaked through every carefully rehearsed phrase I’d prepared during the drive over, reducing them to limp, ineffectual fragments. All my tidy, well-constructed sentences—words meant to uplift, to encourage, to gently inspire—now felt embarrassingly artificial in a space so visibly marked by fatigue and survival.

I searched inwardly for something—anything—that might seem appropriate. A thread of comfort. A practical suggestion. Even just a word that wouldn’t land like a misplaced decoration in a room that had no use for frills.

And then Evelyn, in the quiet way she always managed to read a room without announcing it, stepped gently into the space between us.

“Nice morning, all things considered,” she said, her voice light and unhurried as she cast a glance down the street, where nothing much had changed. “That dog down the road is still barking his head off at something. Must be going completely mad with all the magpies nesting in the bottlebrush again.”

It was such a small kindness, dressed in the modest clothes of idle comment. An offering that asked nothing in return—a lifeline woven from the thread of shared mundanity. A way of saying you’re still part of the world out here, without demanding that anyone step fully into it.

Shayna’s mother made a faint, ambiguous sound. It might have been agreement, or it might simply have been the verbal equivalent of a shrug. Her eyes remained fixed on the bundle she held, still turning it slowly in her hands as though unsure what she was meant to do with it—or why it had been given to her at all.

Her gaze didn’t lift again. No further words came.

I followed her line of sight briefly, noting how the tissue had shifted slightly, the neat ribbon now resting at an angle. Then my eyes drifted past her into the dim hallway, where the television’s laugh track continued its rhythms—too loud for the atmosphere, too cheerful for the room it filled.

When I looked back, Shayna was already gone.

Not with any drama, not with the resentful flounce of a teenager making a point—but with the quiet vanishing of someone who’d long since learned how to slip unnoticed from spaces where she wasn’t sure she belonged. She simply receded, like mist retreating from sunlight, one step at a time into the deeper shadows of the hallway.

There was no backward glance. No farewell. Just the memory of her thin frame at the edge of the room, retreating into a quiet that had clearly become familiar.

The weight returned to the air around the doorway—dense, unmoving. It settled at the base of my throat like something that might need to be swallowed, but couldn’t yet be named.

“Anyway,” I said, the word landing clumsily in the charged quiet. “We won’t keep you any longer.”

Her mother gave a small nod—single, slow, weary. “Thanks,” she murmured, voice as flat and grey as dishwater abandoned in a cold sink.

Then the door closed.

Not with resentment. Not with haste. Just… closed. A quiet, conclusive gesture. A punctuation mark at the end of a visit that had never quite become a conversation.

We turned, wordless, and walked back to the car. Our steps were even, but slower now, as though the emotional weight of what we’d just absorbed needed time to settle properly into the soles of our shoes.

The gravel crunched beneath our feet in loud, sharp bursts, far too vivid for the muted atmosphere we carried with us. From somewhere nearby, a bird called out—bright, shrill, insistently repetitive. The kind of sound that belonged to another world entirely. A louder world. A world where things moved.

The air outside felt clearer—brighter, even—once we’d created a little distance from the house. As though we’d walked out of a space where the pressure had been subtly rising all along, and were only now noticing how constricted our breathing had become.

But the tightness in my chest remained. Undiminished. Inescapable.

I settled behind the wheel of the Corolla, positioning both hands at the familiar ten and two, my fingers stiff against the textured plastic as though they'd forgotten how to rest. The steering wheel felt colder than it should have after a morning in the sun, a chill that seemed to rise more from inside me than from any external surface. My heart maintained its steady, insistent thudding—not racing, not loud, just there. Weighted. Present. As if it were the only solid thing anchoring me to a world that had otherwise grown distant and pale, like scenery viewed through a veil of gauze.

I’d tried. I had really tried. The dress hadn’t been an afterthought—it had been a labour of quiet intent. I’d chosen the fabric myself at Spotlight, sorting through bolts of budget cotton and synthetic blends until I found the soft muslin in lavender. Gentle. Unthreatening. Kind to the skin and modest in design—something delicate enough to feel like a gift, but not so fine it would embarrass her. I’d measured, cut, pressed, stitched. Each seam sewn with care, each decision made with the hope that it might offer her a moment of brightness in a life that looked sorely lacking in light.

I’d pictured her standing just a little taller in it. Pictured her seeing herself, maybe for the first time in a while, as someone worth that kind of beauty. That kind of effort.

But she hadn’t even looked at it. Hadn’t shifted, hadn’t reached out, hadn’t flickered with even the smallest spark of interest.

Now, behind the wheel, I stared through the windscreen at the street ahead. The front verge lay half-defeated, tufts of stubborn grass pushing up through hardened soil, the metal letterbox beside it slumped like something bowed under the weight of its own irrelevance. Even the sky above seemed subdued—greyish and thin, as though uncertain whether to commit to sunshine or settle fully into cloud.

The world around me felt still. Not peaceful, but suspended—like something waiting for a cue that hadn’t come.

And inside that stillness, something in me faltered.

What were we even doing out here?

What was the real purpose of these visits, if they arrived like foreign objects and left no visible trace behind? What good were all our casseroles and kind notes and tissue-wrapped offerings if they never actually reached the people they were meant for? If they just... bounced off, ineffectual and forgotten?

I’d done something good. Hadn’t I?

Something kind, something thoughtful, something that mattered.

So why did I feel as though I’d just failed a test I didn’t even realise I was taking?

And then, uninvited, the image returned. That flicker of something I hadn’t wanted to see and now couldn’t forget—Shayna, brushing her hair back with one narrow wrist briefly exposed. A smear of darkness beneath the sleeve. Nothing dramatic, nothing theatrical. Just a faint, discoloured patch where no such mark should have been. A bruise, perhaps. Or several. Fading, healing—but still there.

It had appeared for less than a second. I might have imagined it. I could tell myself that.

But I didn’t believe it.

Beside me, Evelyn stirred—her cardigan catching slightly against the seatbelt as she reached for the buckle. Her voice came as it always did in these moments: gentle, non-invasive, giving me room even as it offered a tether.

“We might try visiting again next month, eh?”

I nodded, still watching the empty street ahead.

My hands tightened against the wheel. The leather grain bit into my palms like a reprimand.

Yes, of course we’d try again. That was the rhythm of this work—consistency, presence, gentle insistence in the face of closed doors and quiet despair. Turning up even when you weren’t wanted. Turning up because, sometimes, being there mattered more than being welcomed.

But I couldn’t lie to myself about what we were really achieving here.

I wasn’t sure we’d ever get in. Not really. Not into that house, not into the mess and the murk and the pain of whatever truths were being carefully walled off behind those drawn curtains.

And—if I was being honest—maybe the real tragedy was that we’d only just begun to realise...

that might not be entirely their fault.