“Are you okay?” Taylor asks, and when I look over at her, her brows are drawn together. She doesn’t realize the ghosts this place holds for me.
I shake the memories out of my mind, setting to work. “The movers will be here soon with the furniture. Do you mind sweeping up in your room so they can get your bed set up?” I reach across the small kitchen island and grab the wooden-handled broom resting covered in cobwebs against a chair.
I remember the day we left it here, when Taylor was just a baby.
The neighbor has been checking on the place, but it’s still just as we left it, and I’m struck with a thought all at once.It didn’t forget.
Tears hit my eyes, and I clear my throat.
Taylor stares at me as if I’ve lost my mind, waiting several seconds before she takes the broom from my hand with two fingers—as if it were a bug. “You want me to sweep my room? I’m going to get tetanus.”
“Come on, honey. Please. Do you need me to show you which room it is? It’s the one on the right. Bathroom’s directly across from it.”
She glances down the hallway. There’s a bathroom, two bedrooms—one on the side and one directly at the end of the hall—and a staircase in the back that leads to a loft so small it hardly qualifies as a room. My grandma had a rocking chair up there when I was young. A dollhouse. I used to paint pictures and read books on the red floral rug during particularly rainy days. Backthen, even that dusty little hideaway felt special and magical. Now I’m realizing just how cramped and plain it all is.
With a sigh, she turns away, muttering something under her breath that sounds like, “Oh gosh. How ever will I find it in this maze of a house?”
Once she disappears down the hall, I move over to the counter and squat down, opening the cabinet under the sink carefully, half expecting a mouse to jump out at me. To my relief, though, there’s no mouse. Or at least, not anymore. The evidence they have been here is scattered across the old newspaper placed down as shelf liners.
I lean in cautiously, turning the valve connected to the old brass pipe. It creaks and groans. I lift up, closing one eye as I turn on the faucet. When the water sputters with air then releases into the sink, my eyes line with unexpected tears.
This time, it’s not because of a memory. For whatever reason, this feels like the first sign everything might actually be okay. That, somehow, we’ll make this place work. At least for the summer. After that, we’ll figure it out as we go.
With that bit of good news, I flick on the light above the sink, letting out another short breath as it comes on without issue, and glance around the room, trying to decide where to start first.
My eyes find the small, clay cookie jar tucked back in the corner, and I pull it forward slowly. The stone rattles across the wooden countertops. I place it in front of me, wiping dust away from the black, hand-painted letters.
The jar is worn in a pattern from years of use, proof of the fingers used to pry the lid off. My little fingers and so many others. I never thought to ask how old this was, but looking at it now, I know my grandma wasn’t the first to use it.
It’s funny, the things that are unimportant as a child, and how much they mean as you get older.
“Uh, Mom?”
I’m startled by Taylor’s wary voice, drawn back to the present again. I hustle down the hall on my way to her. “Is everything all right? What’s wrong?”
She’s standing on the far side of the bedroom, a pile of dust next to her foot as she stares down at the hardwood floor. “How long has it been since anyone stayed here?”
I breathe out with relief. She’s okay. “A while. Thirty years.” It feels impossible. “But your grandma always had someone check in on it. A neighbor, I think. The one who mows the grass for her. He stops by and looks in the windows every few days, drips the faucets when the temperature drops down too cold. Why? Is it a dead mouse or something? We’re bound to see some critters?—”
She scoots something across the floor with her foot, and it takes me several seconds to register what it is.
“A Reese’s wrapper?”
“It looks new.” Her eyes meet mine. “Like someone has been in the house recently.”
“Well, who knows how long these things last,” I mutter, but deep down, I worry she’s right. This wrapper looks as fresh as if someone dropped it on the floor today.
“There’s more.” She points farther back in the corner, to a space hidden by an old box of items we left behind when I was a child. Stepping toward her, I see a pile of trash. Candy wrappers, empty soda cans. Upon closer examination, I realize there’s a banana peel in the pile, too. It’s dried out and brown, but not so much that it looks as if it’s been there for months or even weeks. If I had to guess, this is just a day or so old.
A lump forms in my throat as I force myself to keep calm, to not scare or worry Taylor. “Probably just the neighbor. I’ll ask your grandma.”
She eyes me. “The neighbor who is supposed to ‘look in the window now and again and drip the faucets’ has been cominginto the cabin and leaving his trash? Yeah, sure. Okay. Seems legit.”
I muster my best smile. “I’ll get it sorted out, okay? Why don’t you start going through any clutter left in my room instead? I’ll finish sweeping yours.”
She rests the broom against the wall with a groan, moving past me. “Fine, but if there’s a squatter here, can we just, like, let them have it?”
When she’s out of the room, I inspect the pile of trash closer, wondering if, in the strangest turn of fate, she’s right.
