The Empty Setting

It wasn’t until the funeral was over and the casserole dishes were empty that the house seemed to exhale. Nora watched her mother’s friends drift through the kitchen like ghosts in the late afternoon light, their voices muted by grief. She was only a toddler, but she would later hear this story from her aunt Maura, who had been there, and Maura swore it happened.

Maura, Nora’s aunt on her mother’s side, had been close to her own father, a quiet man who had died by his own hand in the barn behind their farm. The wake had been a blur of black dresses and wet handkerchiefs, and afterward, a handful of relatives had gone to Maura’s house to ‘stay the night.’ They had cleaned the kitchen, dried the dishes, and set the table for breakfast. Then, one by one, they climbed the creaking stairs to the bedrooms, leaving the downstairs dark and silent.

At two in the morning, a sound sliced through the quiet—a low, rhythmic scraping, like a chair being dragged across linoleum. Maura’s brother, Derek, was the one who volunteered to check. He grabbed a baseball bat from the hall closet and descended the stairs, gripping the bat so tight his knuckles were white. Behind him, the others huddled at the top of the landing, holding their breath. Derek pushed open the kitchen door, flicked the light switch, and saw nothing out of place. The counters were spotless. The sink was dry. He let out a shaky breath.

‘Just the house settling,’ he said, but his voice cracked. Still, they decided to check the dining room, thinking maybe a draft had moved something. Derek turned the knob, and the light clicked on. The room was still. And then they saw it: the chair at the head of the table—the one their father had always used—was pulled out, as if someone had just stood up from it. And on the polished wood in front of the chair was a perfect condensation ring, like the bottom of a glass that had sweated in the summer heat.

Maura stepped forward, her hand trembling. She touched the back of the chair, and it was cold to the touch. ‘He always had his glass of iced tea there,’ she whispered. Derek shook his head. ‘It’s been hours. There’s no way…’ But the ring was fresh, the water still beading. They looked at each other, and then, without a word, they backed out of the room and fled back upstairs, huddling in one bedroom with the door locked and a chair wedged under the knob.

They didn’t sleep. They heard no more sounds that night, but in the morning, the chair was pushed back in, and the condensation ring was gone, leaving only a faint clean mark where it had been. Maura never spoke of it again, but sometimes, when she sets the table for family dinners, she leaves the head chair empty, and she always places a glass of iced tea on a coaster before anyone sits down.

Nora grew up hearing this story, but she never believed it until the day her own father passed. Years later, cleaning out her mother’s house, she found a photograph of her grandfather—the one who had died. He was sitting in that same chair, a glass of iced tea in his hand, a faint smile on his face. On the back, in her mother’s handwriting, were the words: ‘He always liked to visit.’