Burn Our Bodies Down(26)

The entry is close and shadowed, all paneled walls and heavy curtains. Immediately ahead of me, a staircase climbs to the second floor. Next to it an arched doorway leads into a big kitchen, the opposite wall cut through with windows that look out onto the back porch and the fields beyond. Off to one side, a huge set of double doors stands slightly open, showing me a sliver of a dark room dominated by a dining table and chairs.

Fairhaven. The house where my mother grew up.

It looked real from outside. But here I can’t keep all of it in my head at once. Just a room, just a wall, just the edge of my mother’s body disappearing around every corner. She’s not here, I remind myself. Nobody but me.

And Gram. She’s ahead of me, waiting in the doorway to the kitchen. “Come on, Mini,” she says.

The kitchen is large, skimmed with yellow light. Through the screen door to the back porch, I can see acres of gold. Beyond them, a strange stand of trees on the horizon. Some seem jagged, their trunks bent at odd angles, while others blur into green growth.

Everything here is old, older even than what we have back in Calhoun, but where our apartment is falling down, Fairhaven is neat. Well kept, even as it gets further away from being new. A small table is tucked against the wall, an empty vase perched in the middle of it, one chair pushed in. One chair, for Gram. Nothing to tell me another girl ever lived here.

Doubt drops through me. But I saw her. We all did. She had to come from here—where the hell else?

Across from the table is the fridge, humming, gleaming brightly, like it’s just been polished. Gram goes to it, carefully adjusting the fall of a hand towel looped over the oven handle before pulling the fridge open and removing two bottles of water. My mouth goes dry at the sight.

“Finish this,” she says, handing one bottle to me and pointing me toward the chair. “The whole thing. You look about ready to faint, and a mess besides.”

I nearly drop it, my hands trembling. The first sip feels like neon sliding through my veins, lighting up every bit of blood, shocking me into somewhere else. It’s so cold. I’ve never felt anything so good.

I drink half the bottle before I sit down, the chair rickety underneath me. At the sink, Gram is busy wetting a washcloth, wringing it out, and I watch her, measure her against this house. It’s big enough for so many more than just her, but she’s all there is. One chair at the table. One cup and one plate in the glass-fronted cabinet next to the fridge.

“Is it just you?” I ask. I mean so many things. The girl. My grandfather, or aunts, or uncles, or anyone. Anyone.

“Just me,” Gram says, nodding. “Been that way for a long time.”

How long? Since this morning?

“And now me,” I say instead. I shouldn’t be so eager. I shouldn’t show Gram how much I need her to want me here. I can’t help it, though, can’t help my instinct to throw myself forward at the slightest opening.

“Now you,” Gram repeats.

She comes toward me then, draws her fingertips along my jaw before I can flinch and starts dabbing at my forehead with the washcloth. It comes away black, stripping ash from my skin. She’s a little too rough, and it hurts, but I go stiff, sit as still as I can. Watch her watching me with stern, dark eyes.

“There,” Gram says, stepping back. “That’ll do for now. Although you’re still a sight, I’m afraid.” She tosses the washcloth into the sink, wipes her palms on the front of her jeans. “Right. Let’s get you fed.”

I nearly faint with relief. Besides the chips from the Omni, it’s been almost a day since I last ate, and my body feels like it’s flickering in and out. “Please.”

“And then I’ll call your mother.”

Oh. I was really hoping we could avoid that. I look down at my shoes, at the peeling soles. “I, well—”

“With feeling, Margaret.”

I jerk at the sound of my full first name. Even Mom never calls me that. “She won’t answer,” I say. “She won’t come.”

Gram almost looks proud as she pulls her hair over one shoulder. “It’s true that Nielsens are a stubborn sort,” she says. “But your mother has nothing on me.”

With that she turns and makes for the entryway. “You wait here,” she says. “I’ll go get your room sorted and find some clothes you can wear.”

She disappears around the corner, her footsteps muffled as she climbs the stairs. And here I am. Alone in Fairhaven.

I turn around slowly, scanning the room for any sign of Mom. No framed school pictures, no old holiday cards. Now that I’ve met Gram, I wouldn’t expect anything different. If there was ever any sentimentality in our family—and it still sends a shiver through me to think about it, my family—it was bred out a long time ago.

She would have been here, that girl. Would have sat at this table and lived in this house, and where did all the proof of it go? Did it burn up with her?

But why hide it? Why keep it from me? All I’ve ever wanted was somebody to be there with me. I would have never let her go.

I finish my water bottle and go to fill it back up. The tap is dripping, hitting the metal sink with a wet smack, and as I get closer, something twists in my stomach. A sugary smell with a bitter tang spiking through it is coming from the drain. I think of the glimpse I caught of the inside of the fridge, the cases of water waiting there. Maybe this isn’t safe to drink.