The choice we didn’t make niggles at me. What if we could make it again?

Time moves differently at night. The hours are viscous, smothering me.

Sometimes I’ll leave my bed and wander around the house, just to pass the time. I’ll stand at the doorway of Levi and Manny’s room, lean my head against their doorjamb, and listen to them breathe. Sometimes I’ll close my eyes and breathe with them. If there was a way to siphon some of that easy sleep, I would.

Tonight, I skip the younger boys’ room, walk past Sarah’s empty room, and see light filtering from under Daniel’s door. I touch my fingers to the door as if to feel my boy on the other side, feel his turmoil, yet all I feel is smooth wood, warm like skin, but unresponsive. I pause, wondering if I should call out to him, but I don’t want him to push me away.

Daniel takes up so much space in my head there’s only tiny bits left for the twins, for Sarah who married a year ago and has a baby on the way, for my husband, Asher, for the things we need to maintain daily living. All I think about is which path got us here. Maybe it was the way I held him as a baby, or the things I’ve said to him in love or anger. Maybe it was the school we sent him to.

I’m sure it’s the last one.

I touch the door one last time and walk downstairs.

This house belonged to Asher’s grandparents before it became ours. We’d lived across the street, and after his grandparents passed away, we bought it. I’d always loved the house, a sprawling old Victorian, because of its whimsy. It has two turrets, stained glass windows, and a walled garden, and though we’ve lived here for years, we keep finding new details.

There was the time the kids were playing in what used to be the library, and a bookcase swiveled open to reveal another room behind it. The day I moved the dusty rug in the center of the kitchen and I noticed a lighter patch on the floor. Thinking it was dirty, I got down to scrub it, felt grooves, and realized it was a trapdoor, which opened to a set of stairs leading to a storage room filled with old mason jars.

Tonight, I feel drawn to the basement; I’ve not yet been there in the middle of the night. The darkness is deeper below, and each sound becomes more discernable. The house is trying to talk to me; Go back to sleep, it says.

I run my fingers along the dark basement wall, and feel a notch I don’t recognize. I let my fingers follow a vertical ridge. It stretches higher than I can reach. I move my hand across and feel another vertical notch. I press and something gives way.

I’ve opened a door I never noticed before.

There’s a draft coming through, and I’m certain it leads outdoors. I walk down a rough stone passageway that looks carved out of bedrock, but I know it isn’t because we aren’t far down enough. The passage ends at the street.

In the light of the moon I can see my house. It isn’t the usual gray, but cream, and the shutters aren’t white, but black. Still, it’s the same house — the shape is the same, the garden has the same rosebushes, the same boxwood shrubs, though these aren’t as high as the ones I remember. I look across the street, and I see the blue colonial where Tom and Celeste used to live.

In the cool night air, my arms prickle, but not from cold.

That colonial exists no more; the new owners knocked it down when Daniel was ten. The last time my house was painted cream was 15 years ago, when Asher’s grandmother lived here; we repainted when we bought it. The parked cars and minivans seem boxier, and I notice a lot across the street, with a house half built. The Kleins live there now. They were building their house the year I applied to school for Daniel.

I’ve heard about Doors like this that can warp time and place, but I thought they disappeared as the old houses were remodeled, or cleared to make way for the new. Our house gave us a few surprises over the years, but I never thought it had a Door.

Doors are tricky. They don’t always open to places you want to go.

The moonlit street is deserted. I turn back and go inside.