Chapter One
Traci kills the ignition with a swift hand. Her aging station wagon shudders to a halt and the headlights flick off. It’s evening. The old-growth trees that surround Great Aunt Aggie’s property make just enough shade to give our surroundings the dark blue illusion of night.
Traci breathes out relief, breaking our silence. “We’re home.”
Home. I wouldn’t have used such a strong word for this place. I understand why we had to move to Great Aunt Aggie’s old house, but that doesn’t make me any less homesick for the city, its foggy mornings, and our vermin-free house. This place, no matter how many times I visited growing up, remains unfamiliar to me. But Traci needed to come back; she and Aggie were each other’s only close living relatives, since she lived with Aggie as a teenager and all Aggie’s siblings moved out west before Traci was even born. Traci says their moving away was a betrayal of the highest order for Aggie. When the cousins came out east to visit, she’d tolerate their presence as long as they made no mention of her brothers. We’re the only branch of the family left on the east coast. If Traci hadn’t stepped up to take care of the house, it would’ve been demolished. Without Dad around, I had to come with her.
Still, as the sun set over the harbor last night, I thought maybe Traci would decide this was all part of her midlife crisis, same as her losing her job, and that she didn’t actually want to move out to the middle of nowhere to an enormous and desperately neglected house where she spent her unhappiest teenage years. Up until last night, I refused to pack in hopes that would convince her to stay in the city. When that didn’t work, I got mean. We’re both still picking the shards of that argument out of our skin.
Each of us is hanging on to the promise of a fresh start—the only thing we agree on is wanting to get as far out of people’s sightlines as possible after what happened to Dad.
As we step out of the car, the house’s hulking body blocks out the setting sun, coating us in a damp cool. Traci smiles at me wide. “Isn’t it just gorgeous?” she says with a sigh, her eyes glinting against the little remaining light. I squint at Aggie’s house and try to imagine what it’ll look like when all the repairs and cleaning are done. It’s hard. My eyes move over the gaping rottenness of it all, unable to focus on anything specific.
Traci pops the trunk, and we pull our luggage from the car. One thing I share with my mother is a talent for packing lightly. Each of us only brought one suitcase. Jeff will bring the rest of the things in his truck next weekend. He said he couldn’t make the three-hour commute with us on a weekday because he needs to be sharp at work if he wants to make CEO when his boss retires. It’s fine with me that he couldn’t make it. I’m not exactly itching for the three of us to live together—it didn’t go so well last time we tried.
“You got everything?” Traci reaches up to pull down the trunk hatch. She hesitates. “You want to bring in your skateboard?”
My board leans against the dented side of the trunk, the scratched purple UFO on the back reminds me of riding through the night back in our old neighborhood with Nia. I checked my phone the whole way here but there were no messages from her to distract me from the distance of the highway between us. She’s probably heading to the skate park to practice her rock to fakie with some friends before her flight to Freetown takes off in a few days. Homesickness holds me so tight around the throat I can’t breathe for a minute.
“You coming?” Traci is already navigating the path to the house. The structure blurs at the edges, crooked and imprecise. Maybe I’m carsick. “Careful not to get any ticks!”
I shudder at the overgrown grass leading to the door, but grit my teeth and follow. The path often forgets its direction in the alternating weeds and dry patches that eventually take me to the entrance. As much as I try to avoid it, my calves bear the tickling of overgrowth. I ignore the urge to swat away potential bloodsuckers until I’m at the door. I can already feel lumps beginning to swell and simmer beneath my skin.
Traci points to the third step. It’s sagging on the left side. “Watch you don’t step there. It’s rotten.” I’m careful to avoid it as I follow her onto the porch.
Even here, in the questionable security of the porch’s rotten overhang, the details of the house remain blurred against my memory of it. Me and my cousins played out here in the winter, one Christmas when the adults decided to have a reunion. We raced in circles around the house, climbing the railings of the wraparound veranda. Back then, trips out here were an adventure. We were so close to nature and spent summer weekends swimming in the clear waters of a nearby ravine, jumping onto springy beds of moss . . . that vague memory version of this house is as distant as my cousins, who haven’t come to visit in six years.
I wonder what it’s like for Traci to be back. Maybe she only sees what it could become when it’s restored. I can’t tell from her face, which is upturned, searching for the hidden key in the rafters.
“Aha!” she says with glee. She tries to reach for it, but she’s too short. “Honey, I need your height.”
On tiptoes, I reach up into the cobwebbed rafters. The key is tired brass hardware store stock mangled by years of over-twisting in sticky locks. I’m startled by its warmth in my hand, like someone else was recently holding it. I drop it and it skitters to a stop just before it slips through the wide cracks of the soft porch wood. Holding it gingerly between my fingers, I drop it into Traci’s palm.
“Thanks Asha.” Traci kisses my cheek. I almost pull away out of habit, but I want to love her just as bad, and my arms find their way around her. She holds on too long. It’s as if she’s sucking the love out of me. When I was younger, I used to curl up beside her in bed when I had nightmares and melt into the safety of her. Now something about our skin touching is artificial.
Traci unlocks the door and steps inside. The smell of air that’s been still too long curls out of the house like smoke. Its undertones are familiar and alive: aging wood, silver polish, yeast, and pine . . . but the result is as strange as looking at someone you knew well in an open casket; all that compressed dust pretending life.
When I glance back at the car, all that falls outside the house’s shadow is cut with the lowering sunlight, sharp as shards of glass.
In the vestibule, Traci swipes her hand over the wall until she finds the switch and dim yellow light flickers into the space.
“Mice probably chewed up all the wiring in here,” she mutters as she unties her shoes and leaves them neatly next to an intimidating pile of Aggie’s old ones: a rubber boot, a sneaker, a kitten heel she must not have worn since at least the early 2000s, and enormous steel-toed boots that look even older. From my quick glance over the pile, I can’t even find matches for all of them. They’re just collected there, junk removed of all function. Looking at them makes me intensely lonely.
I hold up one of the steel-toed boots. “These weren’t Aggie’s, were they?”
“Put those down.” When I don’t drop the shoe fast enough, Traci pulls it from my hand and throws it back on the pile.
“I could’ve put it back myself.” Traci’s wiping her hands off vigorously on her pants. In between wipes, she gives me a warning glance to correct my tone. Maybe she saw something on the boot I couldn’t see. “Was there a spider on it or something?”
“You don’t know where those shoes have been.”
“Looks like they’ve mostly been sitting in that pile.”
“They meant something to Aggie.” Traci takes a deep breath, then purses her lips. I get the feeling she could say more about the boots but she doesn’t want to get into it right now. Maybe the boots mean something to Traci too.
I kick off my own muddy sneakers and leave them next to hers. She bristles at my carelessness, so I follow her lead and place them neatly on the mat.
“Aunt Aggie liked her shoes. And she never threw any of them out. She was certain there’d be a use for them someday. Typical of anyone who lived through the second world war.” Traci picks up one of the kitten heels and blows the dust off, rubs a corner clean with her sleeve. The patent leather takes on a dull shine. “They look like your size, actually. Perfect condition, too. Why don’t you try them on?”
I take the shoe like it’s a wild snake. Part of me wants to point out the hypocrisy in her offering me one of the shoes right after snatching one from my hand, but I remind myself of the fresh start we both want and can my criticism. Maybe this kitten heel is a peace offering. When I went to prom with Steven Kennedy last spring, I hated every moment I was chained to my shoes, but they were Traci’s treat; our first big purchase together after I had to move back in with her when Dad was arrested. She was so excited to share the secrets of femininity I’d been deprived of while living with my father, but wearing them made me feel like a pretender. Was this who I was supposed to be? In all the pictures on Traci’s newsfeed, I look so happy.
Traci holds the other shoe out for me. I slip the heels onto my socked feet.
“Walk around in them a bit. You need to do that to make sure they fit right.”
“I know.” I take a deep breath, paste on a smile for her.
I take a couple awkward steps. Even having walked in heels higher than these at prom, my ankles wobble in their sockets. I pass over the threshold of the vestibule into the dimness of Aunt Aggie’s house.
“They look amazing on you! You should keep them. I think she’d want you to have them.” I doubt that, but I smile at Traci. Aunt Aggie and I barely interacted over the years. By the end of her life, I don’t think she even remembered who I was. She was always kind of scary to me. She had this severe frown line that ran down the center of her forehead and made her look perpetually judgmental. It was years since I’d last seen her, so I don’t know what she would have wanted. I didn’t even know what she wanted when she was alive.
Positivity, I remind myself. This move will make everything easier.
I glance back at the pile of shoes. Was her shoe collection the only company she had in this big house? A crack snags the rough edge of the heel and I trip. The whole heel breaks off. I don’t realize I fell until I’m standing back up and watching the can of beans I shoplifted from the Jiffy-Mart roll from my hoodie pocket into a darkened corner.
“Oh honey, are you ok?” Traci squeezes my arm. Her brow is furrowed. If this fall looked bad, she should see the bruises on my legs from last week’s skate.
“Only thing I hurt was my pride,” I say. The words feel stolen from Dad’s mouth. Traci doesn’t laugh. It reminds her of him too. Neither of us, me or Dad, could ever stand to be embarrassed. Even the smallest mistakes we brush off or try to cover up. I don’t know why we’re like this, but I think it’s why moving out here feels a little like a relief despite the homesickness. I don’t have to face the embarrassment of everyone I know knowing about the charges against Dad. Instead, I swallow it all down.
“Glad you’re ok,” Traci says finally. “Guess you’re not keeping these, hey?” She throws the shoes back on the pile. “Go take your suitcase upstairs.” Traci leaves her own suitcase at the bottom of the stairs and flips the light switches for all the rooms all the way down the hall to the kitchen. The whole place is exposed for its dusty, neglected self, when in the dark, it might’ve pretended grandness for just a few moments longer.
When we used to visit Aggie, I’d sleep in Traci’s childhood room. That’s where I head automatically. Upstairs, I find myself at the head of a hall on a long threadbare imported carpet. The carpet used to be a rich red, Traci told me, but I’ve always known it to be a faded pink and gray-beige from the wear and tear of feet. The carpet holds Aunt Aggie’s shuffling footsteps. A pattern on the original obscuring it. I try to walk on the places where it looks like she didn’t. Something about stepping on her path feels like bad luck or disrespect.
The oak doors to each room are shut, but their crystal doorknobs still glint in the light that rises up the stairwell. Great Aunt Aggie kept all the doors closed except when family would come to stay. Traci says that with the doors closed, Aggie was able to shrink the house in her mind so it didn’t feel so lonely. When she was growing up, Traci wasn’t allowed in any of the other rooms under any circumstance except holiday visits, not even Aunt Aggie’s. She said it was really the only rule in the house. So, of course, she broke it. When Aggie went out to the market on Saturday mornings, Traci looked inside the rooms. She didn’t find anything interesting, though. Just a bunch of dust and antique furniture. She supposed, for Aggie, looking into those rooms must have brought up memories. For Traci, the rooms felt empty.
I head toward Traci’s childhood bedroom. It’s the only room in the house that doesn’t look perfectly preserved from the Victorian era. It’s another kind of time capsule, though. The walls are pasted with posters of The Cranberries, Prince, Nirvana, and a bunch of local bands long since forgotten. A weird mix of the transition from the ’80s to ’90s that Traci grew up in. Big hair clips and heavy earrings line the drawers. Hairspray aerosol cans in the closet. When I was younger, I imagined the room smelled a little like Traci’s teenage self: all chemical, just like the ’80s and ’90s before people realized how truly fucked the climate is. Her old books are in there too, mostly ones from school like The Catcher in the Rye and To Kill a Mockingbird. I can’t believe I’m still reading the same bullshit books in class after thirty years.
At least, as I turn the icy doorknob to enter, that’s what I expect to see: a time capsule of Traci’s youth. Instead, the walls are blank, faded around where the posters used to be. Everything is blank. No combs or big barrettes on the dresser. The mirror reflects the emptiness of the room. The bed’s made with fresh white linens. It smells like dryer lint. Clean but dusty. When I pass over the threshold, will I become as colorless and empty as this room? I throw my bag on the bed to wrinkle the sheets a bit and put my jacket on the floor. There. Now, at least it looks like somebody lives in this old house. If I’d known the room would be so empty, I’d have brought stuff to decorate. Maybe this is better, though. A blank slate. Just what I wanted, right?
As I leave the room to head back downstairs, I think I see a flash of light on the wall across from the mirror. I swear I could feel some heat off it too. I glance toward the mirror, then out the window that opens onto the woods diagonal to it. I can’t see any light from here, not even streetlights. I close the door behind me and walk downstairs to the kitchen.
I find the can of beans in the dusty corner beside the staircase. I cradle them and wipe the cobwebs off the label, then bring the can to Traci in the kitchen. She’s staring out the window over the kitchen sink, in a kind of trance. I have to tap her on the shoulder to get her attention.
She’s so deep in her head that she jumps at my touch and grabs my wrist hard as she turns to face me. Her eyes hold an old well of fear I haven’t seen on her before. When she sees it’s me, she laughs. “You startled me! You’re a regular Casper. All those old stories must’ve gotten to me.” I don’t laugh with her. My heart is racing too, now, but I hold back my fear and shake the can of beans.
“Got this at the Jiffy-Mart.” I place it next to the small bag of groceries we brought from home. When Traci sees the can, her eyes well up.
“Oh, Asha. I can’t believe you bought these. You remember when we used to eat these together, right?”
I nod. We used to eat beans every Saturday when I was a kid and Dad was out working at the sports center all day. Traci always said it was a treat because they’re so sweet they might as well be dessert. Until I pulled the can off the shelf and stowed it away, I’d forgotten about that. Those sweet moments we used to share are buried under all the fights we’ve had since. Ugly things we’ve said that sit just behind the corners of our eyes. And even though I didn’t buy them and I know I shouldn’t be shoplifting, especially after Dad’s arrest, it touches me to see my peace offering is understood. Besides, how can it be immoral to take one can of beans from a gas station owned by a company that’s destroyed the land of this province again and again until half its people are living in poverty?
Traci wrenches the can open and pours the beans into a small pot. The smell of baked beans and molasses fills my head, clears away the strangeness of being here. Sweet comfort food. Traci hums as she stirs.
“Let’s eat.” She pours the beans into two cracked cream-colored hexagonal bowls. We sit at the kitchen table in the bad flickering fluorescence. It washes us out, makes us both look sick and gaunt. But for now at least, that’s a false image. For now, we’re both happy and full and warm. I imagine living here for the next year and it doesn’t seem so bad.
Inside me, the beans grumble. Something skitters across the floor, into the shadows.