Where Have You Been, Margaret?
The answer is nowhere, and everywhere.
Written for 30 Days of Fantasy: Day 14
Author's Note
Of all the questions a story can leave behind, the most powerful are often the simplest.
When I finished writing "What We Keep," I believed Margaret's story was complete. It was a tale about grief, memory, and the strange and unsettling ways we choose to hold on to the past. It ended where I felt it should: with her final choice and Tom’s discovery of the snow globe on the table.
But then, Leanne Shawler asked the question that sparked the second half of this story. She wanted to know what happened next, framing it in a way that was impossible to ignore: “where have you been, Margaret?”
That question lingered.
My first instinct was to try and answer it literally, to follow Margaret into the glass. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized the real story wasn't just about where Margaret went; it was about the empty space she left behind. It was about Tom, alone in the quiet house, staring at a perfect, impossible memory of his wife.
This sequel is my answer to Leanne's question. The answer, I discovered, is that Margaret's whereabouts can only be understood by watching what happens to the person left observing her.
It’s a story about what happens when grief is not a passive state, but an active, hungry force—when the memory you are keeping starts to keep you in return.
Before you step into the quiet, snow-filled house that follows, I hope you will first read "What We Keep." These two pieces are in conversation with one another. This story is the second half of that dialogue, an echo that answers the call of the first.
To truly feel the weight of Tom’s grief, one must first witness the choice Margaret made that set it all in motion.
—CS
Day One
Three days after Margaret disappeared, Tom’s world had collapsed into quiet.
The snow globe sat on the mantel, where Margaret had placed it the night before she vanished. The police had come and gone, their presence already fading like old footprints in snowfall. No signs of a break-in. No financial distress. No digital trail. Just Margaret’s keys still in the dish by the door, her coat hanging limp by the stairs, and the globe—waiting.
He hadn’t touched it. Not at first.
There was a part of him—shrunken, ashamed—that wondered if this was his punishment. He’d stopped asking her how she slept. Hadn’t noticed when she stopped answering.
He just watched.
Each morning, he brewed coffee he never tasted. The mug cooled on the counter, untouched, as toast curled and hardened beside it. Sat with his eyes fixed on that miniature world, as if some version of his wife might press herself to the inside of the glass and wave. She didn’t. But something else began to happen.
The figure inside the globe—a tiny replica of their house, a woman standing in the front window—resembled her. The posture. The cardigan. The tilt of the head.
But it hadn’t started that way.
The first night after she disappeared, Tom could’ve sworn the window was empty. The figure had appeared the next morning. Then shifted slightly by afternoon. By the third day, he was certain: every time he looked away, something changed.
One hour she was touching the glass. The next, her arm rested at her side. That morning, she’d turned—just a little—toward the hallway.
He hadn’t slept. Couldn’t. He was afraid that if he closed his eyes, something would shift again, and this time too much. That she would move all the way to the door.
He whispered her name—Margaret—like a spell.
And for a breathless moment, the figure tilted her head.
Not toward the sound.
But toward him.
That night, Tom sat in the hush after midnight and tried to remember her last days, retracing his steps through old conversations.
He should have seen it—how distracted she’d grown. How she kept staring into her coffee, missing her mouth, folding and refolding the same laundry. She’d gone to bed early, risen before dawn. Once, she’d left the lights on in every room and stood in the hall as if listening for a sound only she could hear.
He’d noticed, but he hadn’t asked. Not really. He’d told himself she needed space.
Now all he could think was: I should have known. I should have asked.
Day Two
By midmorning, Tom was tearing through the dresser in their bedroom, not even sure what he was looking for. A reason. A tether. Something to explain the quiet adjustments happening inside the globe—the movements, the changes in posture, the increasing resemblance.
He found the lease for Rosalie’s old apartment in Rogers Park tucked between unopened mail. Margaret’s grandmother—the one who’d left her the snow globe collection when she died the year before. Margaret had cleared out only a few boxes from the apartment. Said the rest could wait.
Tom didn’t know what he expected to find. But he drove there anyway.
The building still stood between a taqueria and a dry cleaner. Rosalie had lived there most of her life. The super, same one from before, gave him a spare key and didn’t ask questions.
Inside, the apartment was untouched.
It still smelled like lavender, Lucky Strikes, and something colder—like dust with teeth.
The snow globes were still there. Dozens of them, arranged on every surface. More than Tom remembered from Margaret’s descriptions. They caught the light differently now, refracting it into strange little patches that pooled in the corners of the room.
He avoided eye contact with them. Not yet. He made his way to the bedroom.
In the boxspring, he found a leather-bound journal—Rosalie’s. The handwriting began neatly, then unraveled.
Gertie warned me. Said the Prague globe had started moving when she whispered to it. I told her not to whisper back, but she couldn’t help it. Said it looked like someone she lost.
They don’t capture. They echo. Then they adapt.
Margaret thinks it’s grief. I think it’s architecture. We’re being rebuilt inside-out.
At the back of the journal, a smaller scrap of paper in Margaret’s hand:
If the globe changes—go to Gertie’s. Apartment 4B, Ravenswood. Ask about Prague. Don’t stay long.
Gertie’s building in Ravenswood was older than Rosalie’s, stooped like it had secrets in its foundation. The buzzer was dead. A rusted key hung from a nail by the door, labeled simply: M.
Margaret must have left it there.
Inside, the air felt compressed. Condensed attention.
Snow globes lined the walls. Dozens, maybe hundreds. Each one unique. Specific.
A child’s bedroom. A bridge in winter. A bookstore with a sign that matched one Margaret used to love.
They weren’t arranged for display. They were arranged like witnesses.
One globe on a low shelf read Prague.
Tom leaned in.
The woman inside the scene looked up—and moved her lips.
Not like a doll.
Like someone trying to remember his name. Or maybe her own.
He fell back. A globe behind him rattled. Another shook faintly, snow flurrying in a sudden burst.
On a side table, he found a spiral-bound notebook. Gertie’s name written in careful block letters on the first page.
They don’t mimic. They refine.
They improve upon the original.
They don’t want to become her.
They want to become a version of her that won’t leave.
Rosalie called them keepers. I think that was too kind.
You’re not observing them.
They are workshopping you.
Day Three
Tom brought the globes home.
All of them.
It took two trips. He wrapped each one in towels and newspaper and bubble wrap, murmuring apologies to nobody. The car’s suspension whined under the weight. They didn’t clink. They didn’t move.
Back in Evanston, he cleared the dining room table—the big one, meant for holidays they never quite hosted—and began arranging the globes in a careful arc.
Then a second layer. Then a third.
By nightfall, thirty-six globes surrounded his chair like a jury box. And Tom sat in the center, watching.
They responded.
When he laughed—soft, unsure—one figure inside a lakeside cabin lifted its head.
When he hummed, a couple inside the Times Square globe started to dance.
Off-beat at first. Then in rhythm.
The Prague woman moved her lips again.
I stayed, he thought she mouthed.
The phrase echoed in other globes: always a little off, a little more like Margaret, a little less like a memory.
The Margaret in the original globe smiled. Not wistfully. Not confused. But like she knew she was winning.
The figures were correcting themselves.
He tried to recall the real sound of Margaret’s laugh and found it harder than it should’ve been. The memory felt thin, incomplete. But the laugh coming from the cabin globe was rich and clear.
He stopped sleeping.
He just sat there.
Watching them all move.
Day Four
The house began to shift in ways that matched the miniature worlds.
The upstairs hallway felt longer, like the corridor in the Victorian house globe. The guest bedroom smelled faintly of Margaret’s shampoo—the same scent that seemed to emanate from the bedroom scene in the Prague globe. There were coffee rings on the table that matched the ones in the kitchen scene from the brownstone globe.
On the bathroom mirror, a single strand of hair curled in the sink. Blonde. Too long to be his. The exact shade of the figure in the lakeside cabin.
He found himself in one of the globes.
At first he thought it was a trick—just a man in a coat. But then it mimicked a gesture he’d made minutes before. Then a scratch to the back of the neck.
Then it stopped moving entirely.
When he looked back up, Margaret was gone from the globe on the mantel.
He stood so fast his chair toppled. He checked the other globes, desperate. She appeared again—this time in a different one. Sitting at the miniature kitchen table. Hands folded. Waiting.
A loop of soft music played from the hallway—the same melody that drifted from the Times Square globe when he leaned close enough to listen.
When he returned to the dining room, the globes had re-arranged themselves into a perfect circle.
His chair now sat at its center.
Day Five
The snow stopped falling inside the globes.
The flakes hovered, suspended midair. Like they were waiting for instruction.
Tom’s hands trembled when he reached for the Prague globe. Inside, the woman stood facing away from him, one hand to the window, lips moving in a rhythm he recognized.
I stayed.
He couldn’t hear her. But he understood her.
Not by language. By familiarity. The rhythm of her voice. The tilt of her shoulders. The way she used to say I’m listening without needing to speak.
The Margaret in the original globe returned that morning.
Only now, she wore her wedding dress.
Not the borrowed one from their actual wedding—they’d been too broke for the dress she’d really wanted. But this version glowed with satin they’d never been able to afford. This Margaret had gotten everything right.
She poured coffee into a tiny mug on a tiny table. And smiled, like she knew exactly how this ended.
Tom turned to go to the kitchen and stopped.
On the counter was a mug. Still steaming.
He hadn’t made coffee.
Inside the cupboard: her favorite cereal.
The box they hadn’t bought in years.
He opened the front door to get air—and found snow. Too deep. Too clean.
When he turned back, the living room had changed.
Fewer books. A cleaner mantel. A photo on the wall that had never existed—Margaret and Tom, smiling in a house that wasn’t quite theirs.
And every globe on the table now held Margaret.
Each one a little different. Each one watching.
He blinked, and for a moment, couldn’t tell if he was looking into the globe or out of it. The dining room felt smaller, more contained. Like a scene viewed through curved glass.
The walls seemed to curve inward.
The ceiling pressed down.
And in the globe nearest the window, Tom saw himself.
Just a figure in a chair.
Hands folded.
Eyes wide.
Still.
Watching.