I curl up on the floor in, with the window wide open. The wind of the approaching storm tears at my mother's second-hand curtains, and they ripple above me like a raging sea.

Thirty-seven. Forty-eighty-one. Ninety-six.

I type in the phone number by heart, needing both hands because I'm shaking like I always do when I do this. The cornice almost comes off, I should get up to close the window, but I don't move, I focus with every fiber of my being on what I hear. For now, it's quiet, except for my own breathing, but soon the static noise starts to crackle, it gets louder and louder, and then anything could happen, that's the only thing that reaches my consciousness.

It rings.

I close my eyes, my heart seems to be pounding in my throat, which is impossible, my eighth-graders would look at me like that if I told them something like that. At the same time, what is possible and what is not are less and less separable categories for me. Reality is more arbitrary than I imagined.

This line is not live. It wasn't even alive when I lived there, where the device at the other end is dusting. I know what's coming next, another cynical move by alleged reality.

Someone answers the phone in the empty house on Seaholly-Hill.

Fibrous tendrils woven on the windowsills. Molding boards under my feet. Cold rain drips down through the hole in the ceiling.

"Hello?"  There is no answer, only a draft blowing through the rickety building. "Füli?"

It's him, I know. If I concentrate hard, I can hear his breathing over the noise.

His hand in mine.

Bloody skinned nectarines in my hand.

His hand is on my mouth, he holds me down.

I grip the phone so hard that my fingers hurt, and then I don't dare to open it. I'm waiting for something different than it was before, but in vain. I disconnect the line and close the window as fast as I can, as if I can shut out my terror along with the storm.

"That's exactly what I wanted to ask you to do," says mother, opening the door she left ajar. - Are you okay?

"Of course!" I hastily throw down my Clint Eastwood cotton t-shirt that I used for sleeping. A year ago, it was tight on my breast, which made Clint look like his botox treatment had gone badly wrong, but today it just flops on me . "My train leaves in twenty minutes."

"But you'll be home soon, won't you? Like you said."

"Yes." I fasten my bra, which is two cup sizes smaller than before, and even though mom doesn't say it, I know she's still horrified by the sight of my collapsed breasts. My pants are no longer tight on my thighs either, which I would have been happy about not so long ago, considering that all the pants were always tight on me, but the sudden weight loss made me just scraggy, not slim. "I'll just discuss with the principal what else he wants to discuss, then I'll rush back."

"Okay. I'll help you pack the rest of your things. Take the black umbrella, I put it by the door."

She took it with her to the store just as a precaution, and for now, I'll take it just for that reason. The black one is the only umbrella we can afford, apart from that we only have a duckling and a neon yellow one, both of which, like the curtains, are something that no one else needed anymore.

I put my bag on my shoulder and close the lid of my ninety percent packed suitcase. It's the middle of August, which means that I informed the school management just in time that I was resigning, after only nine months. The problem was not with them, and especially not with the children. The reason is my move, due to which I had to pack up the part of my belongings that I brought home from my husband's house a year ago.

"Are you sure you're not waiting for Niki?"

"Not possible. Tomorrow I have an appearance with the principal of the school there, I have to sign the papers, something like that. I have to be there for the first meeting as well.

Niki, the daughter of my mother's best friend, who is the same age as me, volunteered to bring my belongings to Réthavas after me, which I could not carry in my suitcase, for example my printer, without which I could bury myself as a teacher. Even in the school in Debrecen, the use of school printers is a lost cause, I can't even hope for such a thing from a tiny village in Heves county.

"Okay, sweetie."

Mother props open the kitchen door so that the glass insert does not become the first victim of the cyclone passing over us. She's still wearing the worn-out kitten slippers she got from me seven years ago, her braided hair is thick and copper-red, but dyed, originally as light brown as mine. She has a thin, distinctly lean figure, which did not help me much in understanding the origin of my breasts, which I considered to be bulky. She always explained that I was taking after my paternal grandmother, whom I never knew.

We live in one of the quietest cul-de-sacs in Újfehértó, where most people are so comfortable and peace-loving that our next-door neighbor has been getting away with burning plastic bottles in his back garden for the fourth year in a row . The mud in front of our gate is huge, next to the road there is a half-full puddle, in which I think I can discover the shape of a turtle. I've always had a lot of strange associations, which I use a lot on a daily basis, since my memory for names is disastrous. I was also able to remember the name of our new shopkeeper, Szúnyogh*, only because of the rhyme " I caught a mosquito ".

I step over the turtle's shell and hit the road.

***

37481691

Outgoing call 09:04

In my phone's log, this is the same entry as all the others. I won't make any more calls to this number, although I haven't really had a reason to do so. The house on  Seaholly-Hill has been uninhabited since Füli disappeared, and I fled back to my mother. In any case, that's not why I'm giving up this bizarre hobby, but because I'm going to spend tomorrow night in Réthavas. My decision is final, even if the thought fills me with such deep horror that no one should ever know. I know that I hear my husband when I call this number, even if the title of widow could rightfully come before my name.

I am gazing at my screen, like the majority of people waiting at the train station in Újfehértó, which has seen better days. The concrete is hot under my feet, I can feel it through the thin soles of my baby blue ballerinas, the dry wind is wildly tearing the evergreens lined up behind the tracks. When the train from Záhony pulls in five minutes late, we all head towards the doors, the guy with headphones walking next to me throws his still smoking cigarette on the ground. I suddenly have the urge to light up, even though I haven't since I started dating Füli.

I almost stop when my cell phone vibrates, not because of what happened before, but because I see that my sister-in-law is calling.

"I hear you're moving back to Réthavas," she says before I can even open my mouth. "Is this true?"

"Um." I suddenly can't squeeze more out of myself as I reach for a handrail in the small corridor in front of the crowded booths.

"Does it even take a fair answer?"

"Sorry."

She does not forgive me, but not for this, but for my perceived sins. A thousand witnesses, and perhaps not even God himself, could convince Lúcia Szendrődi that I was not behind her brother's disappearance. From what I can hear, she's driving, obviously talking to me on the speakerphone, which is not interesting at all, because the only thing her car can't do is maybe baking pizza.

"Well, it's one thing that Adorján is de facto dead, but de jure he's fucking not. Which means you have nothing to do with that house."

This is something I don't feel like talking about at all, but Lúcia leaves me no choice.

"I'm registered there." "She doesn't answer that, but I hear some beeping, maybe he's buying a parking ticket." "Lúcia, how do you know I'm going back? From Regő?"

"I don't think it's my duty to answer that," she replies, and it's funny, but as cold as her words are, her voice has such a pleasant ring to it. She is only two years older than me, but if you look at where we are in life, it could be two decades. "Where is the car? Still in the garage?"

"Yes. I can't drive, I wouldn't even know what to do with it."

"You could have learned since then." " Of course." After the disappearance of my seriously ill husband, I immediately enrolled in a driving school. However, I would never have the courage to put it into words. "Whatever, so it's there? Because you really have nothing to do with it."

"It is."

"That's right."

She hangs up, doesn't waste his time on me, and to be honest, if I thought what she thought, I wouldn't be there for myself either. Of course, I don't plan to share my experiences with her regarding the phone calls, as well as everything I witnessed in the Seaholly-Hill house. Without a doubt, my sister -in-law is not in the least open to the possibility of a volatile reality, and would only hate me all the more for it.

***

There are not many of us in the building, for now the staff is trying to deny the fact that the school year is about to start, just like the students. A few of the lower grade teachers are changing the decoration of the corridor, VACATION! letters and instead of colorful paper umbrellas, autumn patterns are applied to the wainscoting.

Crumbs, the director, whose name is of course not that, looks at me  with genuine concern in his watery eyes. His shirt, as usual, is covered in biscuit crumbs, and an opened package of Győri Sweets biscuits with cocoa flavour is lying on his table. His office is boiling hot, both of our faces are sticky with sweat.

"There's no way you'd change your mind? Nothing is certain about the teacher replacing you yet, we can sort it out."

"Thank you, but I've already been admitted to the Réthavas school." "After all, he arranged this for me, so he knows very well. The general shortage of teachers characteristic of the country was a grist for me, the elementary school of the small village has not been able to find a permanent art teacher since then, and the fact that I was able to give lessons in biology and natural sciences was especially useful. "I don't want to make an ass out of my mouth a second time."

The only reason I dare to speak profanity is because I know Crumbs doesn't mind, provided there are no students nearby. He could also be a statue of goodwill, for that matter. Regő, the private investigator whom Lúcia released to me, also contacted him last December, but instead of yapping about me, the director just sent him to hell in a sophisticated manner.

"I know, but... Miss Nyári will be on maternity leave for a long time. Moreover, there is no guarantee that she will come back. We love you here, Veca."

"I would also like to teach here, but I have to go."

Crumbs gives up, but actually, it's not my novice teacher competences why he wants me to stay, I know that. He knows my story and doesn't want me to go to the Mátra Mountains alone, as a voluntary exile of a grieving woman.

"Please sign this. It only says that you have returned all school-owned publications to the library." He slides a form in front of me. The letters are so small that I can barely see them, so I take out my glasses from my bag, which I carry with me in a small white case. "I haven't seen that on you before."

"Sometimes it's just for reading. I know it looks terrible on me." My vision deteriorated at the same time as my drastic weight loss, but my mother had an explanation for this, namely that I inherited the tendency to do so from her, even though she only needed glasses over fifty. "It was my husband's."

***

Szörnyi, Mom's spoiled, chubby, gray cat is lounging on the doormat. I scratch the base of his ear before I go in, and since the wind has died down and it hasn't rained since then, I just close the mosquito net behind me and let the house air out. Mother is not in, I can see her from the window, fiddling with the few rows of wilted tomato plants. Every year she plants tomatoes and eight to ten heads of lettuce, these are practically all the ornaments of our small garden, there is nothing else at the front and the back, only bumpy, black soil.

I have a lunch of mother's slightly watery green pea stew and fatty meatballs, then I go to my room to continue packing. The room is very crowded even though half of my things are in my suitcase and the other half is in Réthavas. Mom always brings home everything that someone got bored of or replaced, be it a chest of drawers, a chair, a hypo-stained carpet or a set of fluffy, tasteless decorative pillows. "That way no one can say that our house is empty and boring" , he often said when I was a child, although the fact that this would have applied to our whole house was a bold statement in light of the fact that at that time almost everything went into my room, as if he wanted it anyway to keep us from feeling deprived.

I see a small pile of envelopes on my bed . The sender is Erika Huszár, a future colleague of mine, with whom I have maintained a good relationship since my short career in Réthavas. This is my post there, Era just forwarded them here, as she has done all year so far. Although in most places I was able to arrange for official letters to be delivered to Újfehértó, as my residence address, this did not apply to all authorities, for example the police headquarters in Eger.

"Well, you found them," Mom enters and immediately starts sorting through my clothes. "What do they want?" She clearly means the police, not internet provider, so I'll limit myself to the former.

"Another summons to testify. On the twenty-seventh of September."

"Again? I can't believe! Do these do anything at all?"

"They keep the illusion alive."

The whole investigation is a puppet show, I know that, and so does my sister-in-law, which is why she hired Regő. However, no one doubts that Füli is dead. Given the condition he was in at the time of his disappearance, it is unlikely that he could still be alive without treatment and supervision. His case was entrusted to a detective named Eszter Fejszés, who, in addition to her other four ongoing cases, sometimes calls me or Lúcia and updates the missing person report issued by the police, which makes as much sense as it sounds.

"Everything okay?" Mom sits down next to me and puts her hand on my shoulder. It smells like chamomile liquid soap.

"Yes."

The water in the tub is a greenish-black swamp.

Barefoot, in a nightgown, I am screaming  on the St John Square.

"You can come back whenever you want."

She presses a kiss to where she rested his hand earlier. She wants to be my support as much as possible, as she always has been. It's clear to her that I'm afraid that I'm not okay , even though she doesn't know anything about what I saw in the house, and that I'm actually going back there because I'm convinced that my husband is still there, in some form, in some way that I can't explain.

We'll just pack in silence for a while. Looking up from the box of my high school art textbooks, I see that mom is fixated on a stain on the wall, the one that was made visible by the absence of a large painting that had been hanging there for years.

"Your room is so strange without it. Although it would have been a shame to carry it home if you were going back."

I step next to her, so we're both staring at the stain. All other surfaces are covered with my own hand-made wall paintings, giving an accurate view of my artistic development. Mainly stylized figures of plants and animals, creeping flowers, foxes, bears and tropical birds, which predicted my fascination with biology.

"I've always loved your drawings!" Mom says. "They're so telling, and of course they're beautiful."

"Telling?"

"Yes. Because you're so quiet, aren't you, you were like that as a child, and people were already inclined to think that you didn't have an opinion on anything. Your own opinion. But your drawings reveal that there is a lot, but you mostly keep it to yourself."

If there is a person in my life who has never hurt me on purpose, it is, besides Füli, my mother. I don't even want to leave her alone, even though I know she'll be fine. I have more doubts about myself.

***

I'm sitting alone on my bed and just staring at the dark screen of my phone. The rain has finally started, which is both a relief and an annoyance. It knocks loudly behind the curtain, while Mom is chasing Szörnyi in the yard to bring him in before he catches a cold.

I enter the gallery, which doesn't feel much better than swallowing hydrochloric acid. Our wedding pictures were taken barely a year ago, above them are dozens of photos from our honeymoon and our previous attempts to renovate the property we recently bought, which for Füli was synonymous with home. He had to wait almost twenty years before he could buy back the house where he grew up, but he didn't have much more time there than our marriage.

I start a video, wiping away the tears sneaking down my face with my free hand.

"Ladies and gentlemen, this is my homemade Zé Fördős**! I wonder what's going on?

My voice is carefree, I struggle with laughter. Füli smiles under his breath, but does not look up. With his shirt rolled up, he slices the zucchini for grilling into regular rings. The light shines in the kitchen, casting a halo around his blondish hair, which curls in delicate curls under his ears, the large knife fits perfectly in his hand, he knows exactly how to hold it, his every move is years of practice.

"So I'm as good as Zé Fördős?" he asks, putting the knife aside and wiping his hands. Even through the recording, the light of his blue eyes penetrates to the depths of my soul, straight into the camera, looking at me , then and now.

"You're better. If it weren't for that, I would be Zé's fiancee."

"Hey! I want that ring back!" The camera image shakes, as I, the cameraman, try to run away from him, but Füli grabs my arm, takes the mobile phone out of my hand, and so the two of us can be seen on the recording. I dig my head into his shoulder, my face is red, I'm squirming back and forth in my confusion, because I'm not the least bit camera-ready, but Füli is apparently okay with it, I'll eat what I cooked. "It seems that my fiancee, Veca, has decided that we should also open a gastro-blog, that is, a vlog. She has no idea that today's menu will be her, Szendrődi-style. Enjoy your meal!"

The recording ends here, because I reached in, covering ourselves. I wish I hadn't.

*"Szúnyogh" in Hungarian is a quite common surname, which means "mosqito".

** Zé Fürdős is a well-known Hungarian gastro-vlogger.

The cat's name (Szörnyi) means basically "little monster" :D