I take off in a sprint, tearing into the woods. The air is damp and cool on my skin, and there’s not much growth to hold me back. Spring. It’s spring now.
Did Mom pick flowers off my grave?
The moon follows me home, a lantern lighting the way. When I see the familiar, sagging front porch of our old cabin, I feel something like relief. But only for a second.
Because the cabin is dark. Abandoned. There are leaves on the porch, which Mom never allows. She sweeps them off every morning, theswish swishalwayswaking me up. The grass in the yard is wild and overgrown. Dead vines crawl along the old sideboards.
I shout for her, but like always, any words lodge in my throat. It’s always been easier for me to speak with my hands.
I bolt forward, bound up the porch steps, and slam my shoulder against the door. It’s unlocked and swings open easily.
Inside is worse than out. Everything looks like it should—the same yellow couch, the same radio in the corner, the same homemade rug on the rough wooden floors. But it’s all covered in a thick layer of dust, and there are leaves on the floor, and a sense that the forest has come inside somehow.
I keen softly, although I know I’m not going to find Mom, not here. I’m not going to be able to tell her I’m okay, that I’m not dead after all. That it was all a mistake. I stumble forward through the living room, heading toward the kitchen. She was always in the kitchen: fixing dinner, washing dishes, sitting at our rickety metal table with her yellow notepad, making her chore list for the day.
And to my horror, she’s in the kitchen now.
I stop in the doorway, a terrible emptiness gnawing into my chest. My mother, but it’s not my mother. It’s a corpse. A skeleton draped in my mother’s favorite floral dress, dangling from the light fixture by a rope. The moon shines through the window above the sink, casting her in a soft, hazy light.
The rage comes roaring back, swelling my body with violence. Like my father, even though I never knew him.Yourfather has a violent soul, Mom told me once.Maybe you’ll have it, too. Or maybe you won’t.
I have it. I feel it, that violence, pumping through me like blood.
I stumble forward and wrap my arms around her hips, the bones clacking together inside her skirt. It reminds me that she’s not alive, that I can’t hoist the pressure of the rope off her throat.
Tears prickle in my vision as I push myself up on the nearby chair. The corpse does nothing, only stares at me with empty eyes and strips of dried-out, leathery skin.She’s been dead a long time, I think numbly, and I don’t know what to do with that information. I don’t know what it means that she’s dead, and I am not.
I pluck at the rope until it unravels, and then I catch her before she falls. The clacking fills my ears, and I choke back a sob as I carry her into the bedroom. She would hate to be laid out on the kitchen table.
Her room is as neat and tidy as always, although the forest has crept in here, too. Vines push through the window above her bed. Leaves scatter across the patchwork quilt her mother made her long before I was born. I settle her down on top of it and then sweep the leaves away, my body trembling with fury.
It’s then that I notice the envelope, propped up on the pillow. My name is written across the front in my mother’s perfect, looping handwriting.
My hands shake as I pick it up. The paper feels brittle and warped. Exposed to the elements.
I rip it open, and inside is a letter on her favorite stationery, the one she always used to write thank-you notes after Christmas.
My dearest Theo,
If you are reading this, then it means I was wrong, and I am sorry. But I simply can not live with this grief. Every moment in this house reminds me of you, my sweet boy, and if you did come back to me—you won’t be my sweet boy any longer. You’ll be like your father, and I don’t know if I can live with that pain, either. So I’m sorry to abandon you like this. It is my prayer that you will never wake up and that I will see you in Heaven. But I know there is an equal chance that you are reading this letter, and I owe you an explanation.
The paper trembles in my hand. My stomach flips around.You’ll be like him.My mother never liked to talk about my father. She said he was dangerous and that he was gone, and that’s all I needed to know.
I force myself to keep reading.
Your father’s name is Cecil Ashbury. He is a murderer. However, he was very kind to me, and I think he loved me, in his way. He told me, when you were born, the odds were even that you would turn out like him. That you would be a murderer, too. He said he would come back if that was the case and teach you his ways. But if you aren’t like him, if you’re like me, he didn’t want to taint you with his evil.
He said the only way to be sure is for you to die. If you come back, you’re like him. If you stay dead, as I will, then you’re like me.
My mouth feels dry and sickly. The stationery crumples in my fingers, my mother’s words swirling around like the dead leaves on the ground.
My darling, if you’re reading this, please seek him out. I believe he is living in Ohio. If you ask enough people about him, he’ll come to you. He will not harm you. And please, please, please forgive me. I could not live with the sorrow of your death or of your sins.
With all my love,
Mom
The letter drops out of my hands and floats down the bed. I stare at the corpse that used to be my mother, blood pounding in my ears. My rage spikes, cruel and hot, although it’s not rage at Mom. I can feel her grief on the air, like a ghost, and I understand that she did this terrible thing to herself because I died.
