by M Sawyer
Nolin forced herself to hold Melissa’s burning glare. Fury and fear mixed into a sickening boil inside her. She would not crumble under that stare; she would not back down. Melissa stood in silence for a moment. Nolin could almost see her thoughts whirring behind her eyes like a slideshow. Melissa gripped the doorknob tightly, knuckles bulging under thin, waxy skin. The door shook back and forth slightly.
“What happened to him?” Melissa asked flatly. The muscles in her neck were still tense and her eyes glowered.
Nolin swallowed, crossing her arms. “He shot himself.”
Melissa drummed her fingers on the doorframe, looking down at her slippers. They didn’t speak for a moment. Nolin couldn’t read Melissa’s expression; her eyes looked flat and emotionless. Finally, she opened the door another foot and stepped back, allowing Nolin inside.
It was like stepping into a ghost of the house she’d lived in before, a shipwreck at the bottom of the sea. Darker than she remembered, a thick layer of dust coated every surface like dirty snow. Fine dirt crunched under her feet. She could see grime built up in the corners where the walls met the floor and ceiling. The air smelled stale, like old clothes, and she thought she caught a whiff of mold. Cobwebs gathered in the corners of the ceiling. She could barely make out the photos in the picture frames for all the dust.
Surprisingly, the kitchen looked like no one had used it in years. From the filth in the hallway, she expected a sink piled high with dirty dishes, maybe food left out and rotting. Instead, the same fine dust spread over the counters and cupboards. The kitchen table was stacked high with mail, mostly unopened. Piles of envelopes littered the floor where papers had slid off.
“This place is disgusting,” Nolin said frankly.
“I allow you in, and the first thing you do is insult my home. I thought I taught you better than that.”
Nolin smirked. You taught me nothing. “I guess what I mean to say is, why?”
“You’re reasonably intelligent, Nolin. Certainly smart enough to know the answer on your own: Obviously, I haven’t cleaned recently.”
“Again, why?”
“Couldn’t be bothered.”
A kettle on the stove whistled. Melissa turned off the burner and the whistle tapered off. “I have chamomile or Earl Grey,” she said. Melissa opened a cupboard and retrieved two mugs, the same ones Nolin remembered. She’d filled them with tea to take up to her mother so many times, but she’d never seen Melissa make tea.
“Er… chamomile.” Nolin sighed. She perched on a barstool and glanced around the downstairs, taking in the details, running through tasks in her head, questions to ask, places to check for dangerous mold.
“Has anyone else been in here since I left?”
“No.”
Melissa fished two tea bags out of a box and dropped one into each mug before pouring hot water over them. Steam rose from the mugs. Nolin imagined the steamy bathroom, the angry hiss of the shower, the smell of blood.
Melissa plunked the mug in front of Nolin.
“I don’t have any lemon. I know you used to take it with lemon.”
Nolin stared into her mug as the tea bag slowly tinted the water dark. She didn’t remember telling Melissa she liked lemon in her tea.
“Thank you.”
“Drink fast, because I might throw your sorry ass back out before you’re done.”
Nolin fiddled with the string of the tea bag, turned the paper tab around to read the message printed on it: You will rekindle an old friendship. Nolin rolled her eyes.
Finally, she sighed. “Look,” she started, her heart thudding. “I’m here to help. This place is a mess, and Dad won’t be sending any more checks. I don’t know if he has life insurance, but I can help you clean the place up and figure out if insurance will pay out. Then I’ll leave.”
Melissa leaned against the counter across from Nolin, swirling the tea bag in her mug. “He had insurance,” she said quietly, staring into her mug, “but I doubt it will pay out for a suicide. And I’m not the beneficiary anymore.”
“What? Then who is?”
“His girlfriend, I imagine.”
Nolin glanced up the stairs and recalled the night when she woke up from a dream, crept into the hallway, and overheard her father on the phone. He’d sat on the very stool that Nolin occupied. She wondered if it was the same woman.
Nolin shifted, then stood up and paced as she carefully sipped her tea. She felt Melissa’s eyes follow her.
“Well,” Nolin said. “We’ll figure something out.”
“We?” Melissa repeated, venom in her voice. “No, you’re a stranger to me. I don’t need help from stranger.”
“Why? Am I any more a stranger now than I was before?” Nolin slammed her mug down on the counter. A drop of hot water sloshed out onto her hand, but she didn’t flinch.
“You were a child, and I was obligated to take care of you. I’d have thrown you out the moment you turned eighteen anyway.”
“Take care of me? When did you ever take care of me?” Nolin spat.
“Who do you think fed you, changed your piles of diapers, taught you to speak?”
“I was a baby. I don’t remember you ever taking care of me. You never did a damn thing besides hide in your room while I tried to get you to eat.” She hoped her words stung like a slap. Melissa calmly sipped her tea. Her body seemed to dangle weightlessly from thin sinews in her neck. She had the look of a new baby bird, mouth too wide for her thin face and elbows jutting out like little wings. Pale fuzz covered her arms like the down of a newly hatched robin. The whites of her eyes looked yellow and poisoned behind the lenses of her glasses.
“I don’t need you or your father. Leave me alone and crawl back into whatever hole you’ve been hiding in.”
“Melissa, look at yourself. Look at this house! Everything’s falling apart and you look like you’ve been...vacuum-sealed or something. I’ve seen corpses that look healthier than you.”
Melissa lifted a sparse eyebrow. Nolin kept going before her mother accused her of being a mass murderer. She was sure Melissa thought she was capable.
“Look,” Nolin went on carefully. “Let me help you get things sorted out, get you into a better situation or something, and I’ll leave. You’ll never have to hear from me again.”
“I don’t need your help.”
“What did you have for breakfast, Melissa? When was the last time you ate anything?”
“None of your damn business, that’s when.”
“That’s what I thought. I’m taking you to a doctor tomorrow, and then this house is going up for sale. You’re in way over your head here.”
“I’m in over my head? You have the nerve to tramp your muddy feet back into my life after years and tell me what to do? You have no idea what the last five years have been like. None. And don’t you dare tell me I’m in over my head, young lady.” She carefully set her mug on the counter with a clink before turning to Nolin, arms crossed, head cocked to the side. “Nolin, why are you really here?”
“I’ve told you.” Nolin clenched her fists, breathing deeply. Melissa was prodding her, feeling for weak spots, looking for a chink in the armor where she could drive her blade through.
“You came to help me, to check on me. I haven’t heard from you in five years and now that you think someone else isn’t taking care of me, you show up. Out of the goodness of your heart.”
One, two, three...
“I think I can guess. You feel responsible for me. Like I’m your problem,” Melissa spat on the last word, a fleck of spit flying into Nolin’s eye. Nolin blinked, stared down at her mother, and held her ground. Four, five, six...
“That’s why you’re here, Nolin. For yourself.” Melissa leaned on the edge of the counter, picking up her mug, and stirred with a metal spoon that clinked inside like a tiny bell. “You feel guilty for abandoning me, so you came crawling back for redemption.”
Nolin looked down at her feet. Melissa sipped from her mug, a soft
smile on her face. Heat swelled in Nolin’s body. Her hands shook, but she unclenched her fists and softened her jaw.
Melissa held her mug to her chest and studied Nolin. Suddenly, Nolin felt exhausted, drained as a dried-out leaf. “You can stay, but you pay rent, you buy your food, you help with bills. Clean if you feel inclined, but you are not helping me, and I did not ask for help. You are just a boarder. Do you understand?”
Nolin sighed deeply. She didn’t have the energy to protest. “Fine,” she snapped.
Melissa nodded slightly, placed her mug in the sink, and brushed past Nolin toward the stairs.
“Your old room is locked, by the way. You can sleep on the couch.”
“Yes, Mother.”
Melissa paused as if someone had shocked her. She didn’t turn to look at Nolin. She brushed a strand of hair over her shoulder and disappeared into the hall. Nolin heard her bedroom door click shut.
Nolin stood in silence for a moment, sucked dry, worn out. The surrealism of the moment pressed on her. She felt like she’d been cut out of her new life and pasted into her old one like a clipping from a magazine. The two just didn’t fit.
Why the hell was her bedroom door locked? Probably sheer spite, Nolin thought. So that just in case Nolin ever did come back, she’d have to sleep on the lumpy couch.
Maybe there was another reason. The thought briefly touched the edges of Nolin’s awareness. She was so tired. One problem at a time.
I’ll be on a plane in two weeks, Nolin thought. I’ll be out of here and never come back.
She clung to that thought as she looked around the filthy room, a nauseating soup of anger, disgust, and guilt brewing in her stomach.
Finally, she sat down at the table, piled high with papers and unopened mail and started to sort, dreaming of glaciers and frozen wind and the smell of pine, cleansing her from the inside out.
Two weeks, and I’ll get the hell out of here.
It would all be over soon.
Chapter 23
THE SHADOW FELT her coming.
Something electric crackled in the air like an approaching thunderstorm. How fitting that the rain started when Nolin pulled into town.
As the Shadow rested under the Claw Tree and dusk fell around her, she heard it. Felt it. Whispers almost too low and quiet to hear emanated from the tree, echoes of thoughts she hadn’t heard in years.
Her bed of dried leaves rustled around her. She reached up and pressed her palm to the underside of the tree with her long fingers spread wide. The whispers grew clearer. Goose bumps spread over her skin. Bits of Nolin’s thoughts drifted through the Shadow’s mind, hazy, almost impossible to distinguish from her own. The Shadow knew the taste of that guilt, the fear that was unmistakably Nolin. Nolin’s veins rippled with it, each heartbeat pushing and pulling the shame through her body. That same shame pulsed in the Shadow’s body. She knew the shame she felt wasn’t her own, for she had nothing to be ashamed of.
But Nolin. Oh, Nolin.
My fault, my fault, my fault… the guilt pounded like a drum.
The Shadow scrambled out from under the tree and set out for the house, running the route she knew so well, arms pumping joyfully. She laughed as she sprang over bushes and clumps of ferns, rocks, and fallen logs.
For years, the Shadow had watched and waited, patient as the dead, with little to occupy her in the meantime except watching Melissa slowly crumble on the inside. Sometimes, the Shadow watched Melissa pace from room to room in the empty house, open and close cupboards, slip books out of the shelves before immediately replacing them. Whatever she was searching for, the Shadow knew she’d never find it.
The Shadow reached the edge of the woods just as a pair of headlights rolled into the driveway. She clamped a hand over her mouth to keep from laughing out loud. Even the woods felt different. The trees seemed to lean forward with interest in the wiry figure with the mop of curly hair. They watched Nolin drive up, hesitantly walk up the driveway to Melissa’s porch. The Shadow watched her ring the bell, saw the door open, saw Melissa strike Nolin. Noticed the steel in Nolin’s eyes.
This was good. This would make things much easier.
A happy tear dripped down the Shadow’s face, rolled off her sharp chin, and fell onto a leaf with a soft pat.
The Shadow’s hope ignited. She waited just inside the forest, watched until the lights went out in the house, just to make sure it wasn’t a dream.
***
I should have just slept on the floor, Nolin thought. She shifted on the couch, her hands folded over her stomach, staring at the high ceiling of the living room. Her back muscles felt like a mass of knotted yarn. Weak light faded and then brightened as the moon slid in and out of the clouds in the dusky night sky. Her ears pricked at every sound: the soft creaks of the house, the swish of the trees in the woods, the gentle groaning of the old couch cushions when she breathed in and out. She wasn’t sure what she was listening for.
If sleeping at home in the mortuary was difficult, here it was impossible. Or was this home? She wasn’t sure anymore. What was home, anyway? Where you live? Where your family is? Where you spent your childhood? Or, where you are most comfortable?
Home is elusive. Home shouldn’t put you on high alert, listening to every sound for the slightest indication of a problem or danger. She knew every crack in the ceiling and every creaky spot in the floor, and this house seemed to know all of her sore spots, every crack and fissure where it could reach in and jab at the tender places.
Home is where you are welcome.
She shut her eyes and willed herself to sleep, tensing and releasing her muscles one by one, starting with her feet and ending with her facial muscles the way Rebecca had taught her.
Less than forty-eight hours ago, she’d sat on the mortuary roof to watch the sunrise. She hadn’t thought about her father in months. Her mother was almost reduced to a figure that lived only in nightmares. Now, here she was at the last place on earth she wanted to be, the last place she thought she’d be in less than two days’ time.
Sleep obviously wasn’t going to happen. Nolin sat up, her stiff muscles screaming. She tilted her head from side to side to stretch her neck and felt a kink in the right side. Her hip hurt where she’d lay on her blocky cell phone. She slipped it out of her pocket and flipped it open. 2:12 a.m.
She sighed and massaged the right side of her neck. Finally, she stood and slipped on her jacket and shoes. Walking carefully to avoid the squeaky spots on the floor, she tiptoed to the back door and let herself out.
Her first gulp of chilly air scrubbed out any traces of tiredness. The yard was smaller than she remembered it. The fence was a little shabbier. Frost sparkled on long grass—tangled and dead in some places and just starting to green and soften in others after a long winter.
Immediately, her conditioned mind listed tasks for the next few days. Mow the lawn, maybe fix and repaint the fence, weed, then get started on the house. How long would this take? The house was a disaster. The yard was in disrepair. God knows what else was wrong with the place. She hadn’t even been upstairs yet. Melissa obviously couldn’t handle the place on her own.
At least she’d managed to hold down a job all these years. Nolin had found unopened pay stubs from a telemarketing company when she sorted mail the previous night. That was good. Melissa couldn’t be completely helpless then, right? She was thin, but still up and moving around. She hadn’t starved herself to death, so didn’t that show she was taking better care of herself? She actually went outside now instead of shutting herself in her room all day. Wasn’t she better?
Nolin could clean up the place and get out. Maybe get Melissa into a smaller apartment that she could handle on her own. Maybe she should help Melissa get back in touch with a doctor, or at least someone nearby to come in and check on her sometimes.
That could take a lot longer than she’d wanted to hang around here. After all, she only had two weeks until she stepped on a plane to leave for good.
&n
bsp; In the morning, she’d hash all this out. One step at a time.
The icy grass crunched under her feet as she walked to the fence. She wiggled it to test its strength, determined it would hold her weight, and climbed up, swinging her legs over and perching carefully on the top board, facing the woods.
The tall meadow grass between her and the tree line swayed in the slight breeze that was no stronger than an exhale. The half-moon slipped out of the clouds and bathed the scene in pale silver light.
Nolin peered into the trees where the moonlight didn’t reach. The darkness seemed thick, made of more than just empty space.
She barely remembered the three days she’d spent in the woods all those years ago. She remembered she wasn’t afraid. If anything, she remembered feeling calm there in a way she never had at school or home. The woods only seemed menacing when she watched them from the outside.
Her fingers drummed on the peeling fence post. She gazed up at the moon before her eyes snapped back to the deep woods. Had something moved? She squinted into the darkness, scanning the tree line for a deer or fox, any sign of life.
The hair on her arms stood up. Her eyes trained on the darkness between the trees. Her mind wound back to countless evenings in her childhood, watching the forest from her bedroom window, and how, more than once, she’d thought there had been something hovering just inside the trees. She’d always thought it was her imagination, but this time she was sure she’d seen something.
She slid off the fence, then pulled her jacket tighter around herself as she strode across the open field between the yard and the edge of the woods. It occurred to her that she’d never actually been on this side of the fence. Tall weeds brushed against her legs, soaking the ends of her jeans with cold dew.
