Chapter Twenty-One

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

I wake up with a scream swelling in my throat.

Someone is breaking into my house.

I leap out of bed, my fingers scrabbling for my iPhone on the nightstand. Blue and red lights pulse through the slats of my blinds, spinning an urgent pattern across the walls.

The tremendous pounding coming from downstairs shakes my home like an earthquake and voices are yelling, "Open the door!"

I dial 9–1–1 and look around wildly. Where can I hide?

Not in the closet. Not in the closet.

An enormous crash tells me they've breached my front door. They're inside now.

There's no lock on my bedroom door. I won't be able to jump out a window in time. It feels like a dream, but I'm wide awake.

"What's your emergency?" the 9–1–1 operator asks.

My throat tightens. For a moment, I'm a child again, unable to speak.

Then I hear a shout from downstairs: "Police!" The blue and red lights mean a cruiser is outside my home.

My legs give out as a rush of relief weakens my body. The police must have scared away the intruder. I slide down to the floor, the phone falling out of my hands, just before two uniformed officers appear in the doorway, guns drawn.

"Is anyone else in the house?" the male officer shouts while the female officer flicks on the overhead light, searing my eyes.

My voice trembles along with my body. But I can speak now. "No… no, it's just me."

"Stay put!"

I pick up my phone and tell the operator I'm safe and that the police are already here, then hang up. My phone screen shows it's 2:38 a.m. The classical music I keep on all night is still playing softly through the mini-speaker on my nightstand.

I hear a shout—"Clear!"—and an echoing call from downstairs—"Clear!"

My brain is foggy. I'm in one of Marco's old Georgetown Law T-shirts with a tiny hole in the shoulder, staring up at an officer who reappears in my doorway and puts his gun back in its holster.

The officer kneels down, his deep-set eyes boring into mine.

"Were you screaming for help?" I can smell the acrid trace of cigarette smoke clinging to him.

I shake my head, bewildered. "No. I was sound asleep."

"Could it have been the TV? Or did you have the music on loudly?"

Again, I shake my head. A crackle erupts from his radio, and he silences it by pushing a button.

"What happened?" I ask. My throat is raw and parched. I desperately want a drink of water, but my legs are so weak I know if I tried to stand up, I'd collapse.

"We received a call that a woman was screaming for help inside your residence. We made multiple attempts to get a response before we broke down the door."

My gaze flits to the bottle of over-the-counter sleeping pills on my nightstand. I took one around midnight.

The officer glances over, and I see him clock the pills, too.

"I must have been having a nightmare," I whisper.

I was looking into my mother's empty eyes and feeling her cold skin as I tried to shake her awake when the thunderous sound of the police breaking down my door tore me away from my dream.

The officer straightens up.

"We can help secure your residence for tonight," he tells me. "But you'll need to get your door replaced as soon as possible."

Two hours later, I'm curled on the couch, warming my hands on a mug of coffee.

There will be no more rest for me tonight.

After I pulled on sweatpants and a fleece top and followed the police downstairs, I saw a few neighbors clustered across the street, staring at my house, their exhales forming tiny clouds in the inky night. I have no idea which of them summoned the cops.

My door is barricaded by a heavy armoire now, but cold gusts muscle in through the splintered wood. I'll need to use my back entrance until I can get someone here to fix it.

I'm wrapped in a blanket, my feet encased in fuzzy socks. I can't seem to get warm.

And I can't stop staring at the cardboard box on the coffee table in front of me. My aunt pushed it into my arms when I left her sterile, harsh home the day I turned eighteen. I've kept it in the back of my closet ever since.

This box is all I have left of my family.

My attempts to keep my past locked away are collapsing if I'm screaming in my sleep loudly enough for my neighbors to hear. It isn't hard to figure out why my old terrors are surfacing: A suspicious death, a silent child—the blueprint of my childhood is being drawn all over again. Everything I've held tightly inside for three decades is jarring loose.

The things we try to bury are often the things that need the most sunlight. Chelsea said this in a message on my voice mail after I stopped therapy. Her words felt pushy and strident then. Now I hear compassion in the echo of her voice.

My childhood has been stalking me my entire adult life. Maybe I need to turn around and finally face it.

I reach for the kitchen knife I placed next to the box.

As I slice through the old packing tape, I flash to Lucille making the same motion in her kitchen. In my mind, I begin to flesh out the scene: Rose on the couch, her head swiveling to watch as she began coveting the sharp-bladed box cutter.

Then I force away the image. I have a lot of thinking to do about Rose and the horrifying possibilities surrounding her in the coming days. But these solemn, dark moments are for a different child.

They're for the little girl I used to be.

I reach for the lid, the same sensation sweeping over me that I experienced when I pulled open the drawer of Rose's jewelry box. I both know and fear what I'm going to see.

The item on top is my baby book.

Something pierces my heart as I open the cover and glimpse my mother's pretty cursive.

She captured everything: My first smile at two weeks— Dad says it's gas, but you and I both know you smiled at me. My first taste of solid food— Four bites of rice cereal… you ended up spitting most of it out. Our girl has a discerning palate already. A lock of my hair from my first trim, the tape holding it in place brittle and yellowed with age.

I turn every page, pausing at times to let my fingertips trace her words, my heart cramping. My skin feels as if it has been peeled away; there's nothing buffering my raw nerves.

I stare at a photograph of me tasting my first birthday cake, a look of sheer delight on my face. The chocolate-frosted cake is homemade and slightly lopsided, with my name written on it in pink icing. My mom and dad are flanking me in the photo, both smiling down at me instead of at the camera.

I fold my arms over my stomach and double over. I'm shaking so hard I feel as if I'm going to shatter like a glass bottle dropped on a cement floor.

My mother loved me deeply; I know this much is true.

The question that comes out of my mouth shocks me. Not just because I speak it aloud, but because my voice is so raw and small. It's the voice of a grieving child.

"Why did you leave me?"