Chapter Three
T he sun feels different in Arizona. When I step out of the car, I stop, tilt my head back, and shut my eyes to focus on the sunlight on my face. I know most people hate the desert heat, but I missed it. I’m always cold. I wish it were summertime so I could truly bathe in it, enjoy one of those long, heavy, heat-soaked days…
I’ve felt starved of sunlight for seven years now, since the last time I saw this house. I was eighteen years old and scared out of my mind. Now I’m twenty-five and…well, I suppose not much has changed.
I roll my shoulders back, stretching out my spine. I ended up stopping a few times along the journey here, catching quick naps on the side of the road and taking care of necessities. But I still made it here far ahead of when the MRF expects me, and that’s a comfort. Now I have some space to think, and reaccustom myself to the house.
All this time, and I’ve never stopped carrying the key. I remove it from my purse as I turn to face the place and stop in shock.
In my head, my childhood home was perfectly preserved, like it was yanked straight out of my memory. But in reality, the place is falling apart after years of neglect. I feel a pinch of something like guilt as I eye the overgrown yard and sagging front porch, the peeling blue paint and grimy windows.
I used to think this place looked like a castle, a beautiful old Queen Anne painted sky-blue, with its pitched roofs and the tower my old room is in.
Yet life here was no fairy tale. And now, it’s like looking at the corpse of someone I once knew, rendered unrecognizable by its uncanny stillness.
I shake off that morbid thought and approach the door, each step creaking beneath me as I climb onto the porch. There’s something unsettling about this place, to be sure. But it’s haunted by nothing more than my old memories now.
Cobwebs gather in the corners and dust coats the furniture. It looks ancient and abandoned. It smells like it, too. Yet a few quick tests prove the electricity and water are still on. The heating system starts with a groan and a stink like something is burning. The utilities and property taxes are still under my bank account, fed by my inheritance so I never have to think about them.
I swallow past a lump in my throat as I turn in a circle to survey the state of things. This place holds many bad memories, but still—it was home . Something I haven’t had in an awfully long time. That home I remember is still here, it must be. It’s just that it’s buried beneath seven years of dust and grime. So despite the bone-aching exhaustion of driving with hardly any sleep, I head to the bathroom to find cleaning supplies.
I pause there, wiping a hand over the mirror to reveal my reflection. I try to remember how it felt to be Daisy. I’ve shed old names and started over like this before, but it’s different now that I’m returning to my real name. I try it out a couple times, “Daisy, Daisy” under my breath, but it reminds me of an old song I’ve tried to forget, so I stop.
Maybe I look the same: lank white-blonde hair, big blue eyes, pale skin. When I was a child, my mother said I looked like a doll. But nowadays, I’m more like an eerie porcelain one than a Barbie, with those shadows under my eyes. It’s hard to look at myself for too long.
I shudder, tie back my hair, and bend down to look for those cleaning supplies. They’re expired, but they’re the best I can hope for.
I spend my first day home cleaning. I move through the foyer to the kitchen, to the dining room and the bathroom, the living room with its vaulted ceiling, my childhood bedroom. The only rooms I leave untouched are my parents’ bedroom and the attic. I dust and sweep, mop and scrub and polish, until my back aches and my eyes burn from the chemical vapors. I get filthier as the house gets cleaner, but there is a sense of cleansing my mind as well.
By the time it’s done, the sun is setting, and I blink as though I’m emerging from a dream. Or an exorcism. I feel thoroughly wrung out in mind and body.
Despite my work, the house still feels unfamiliar. I know the real issue, though I didn’t want to admit it to myself. The problem isn’t the dust or even the time that’s passed.
The problem is that it feels empty . The longer I listen to the silence, the hollower I feel.
I have an urge to clean more, to clean deeper despite my sore muscles. But I’m exhausted, and it’s late. I need to sleep—but first, my stomach cramps remind me that I should eat something.
Which means going into town.
The thought of being out in public in Ash Valley, being around people who might recognize me from my youth, terrifies me. But I need to face my fears sooner or later, and surely nothing can be worse than suffocating slowly in this empty house.
I head into the heart of the town, and circle a local grocery shop twice before finding the courage to go in. But though I’ve seen a number of familiar places today, there are—thankfully—no familiar faces. I buy enough food to survive for a few days and some fresh flowers to brighten up the place. Then I hurry home.
Home. How odd that I’m thinking of it that way already. But in reality, my childhood home was the only one I ever had. Every other apartment I’ve lived in has just been a temporary place to hide.
When I arrive back at the house, a dead bird waits for me on the porch. Black and white and blue feathers mark the fragile little body. I remember a flash of similar colors when the bird hit my window at work, all the way back in Seattle, and disquiet curls in my stomach. Another magpie. Two for joy, goes the saying, but somehow I know there’s more to come.
I try to tell myself that it’s idle superstition, something I thought I rid myself of a long time ago, but I can’t shake my anxiety. After I carry the groceries inside, I return to wrap the tiny, almost weightless body in a plastic bag, laying him to the most dignified rest I can grant right now. I whisper an apology as I tuck it into the garbage bin. Maybe this isn’t my fault, but it feels like it might be.
Once I’m inside, I lock the door behind me. If I was hoping for a sense of safety here, I don’t find it. The house still feels odd, like a stranger who looks like someone you used to know. But I find a vase for the flowers and simmer some water with cinnamon sticks and orange peels till the smell of it permeates the musk. I eat the sandwich I grabbed at the store and make myself a pot of herbal tea, and then I feel more grounded. Hopefully, enough to sleep. It’s never come easily to me.
As I step into my bedroom, I pause, staring at faded pencil marks on the doorway. One side says Daisy . Each tick has a year next to it, marking my height as it slowly rises from a child’s size to my current stature.
The other side says Dorian . The marks start around the same place as mine did, but the last one is so high, I have to stretch my arm to touch it.
Nostalgia is a dull ache in my chest. But there’s another feeling, too. Something strange I can’t quite identify.
Shaking it off, I step into my room and run my hand over the creamy off-white sheets of my bed, stopping behind the chair to my vanity table. I have a vivid rush of memory—sitting here, combing my hair, carefully arranging ribbons in it while looking in the mirror—and ache to do so again, but my overworked muscles argue otherwise. Instead, I turn around, hesitate, and lower myself to my knees on the hardwood floor. I lean over and peek under the bed.
There’s nothing there, of course. But at one corner, I find the familiar sight of letters scratched into the wood. D-A-I-S-Y, carved in crude markings. I run my fingertips over them and smile.
“Good night,” I whisper to the nothing beneath my bed, and climb under the covers.
Sadness comes, as it so often does. Silent tears trickling down my cheeks, turning to body-wracking sobs. There is an ache in my chest I cannot name. I want… I want .
This mattress was always too big for me. But it’s as soft as I remember, and eventually, sleep arrives. As I drift away, I can almost imagine the warmth of another, larger body wrapped around mine.