I stood in my mother’s backyard. My gaze passed over the weedy flower beds and empty bird feeders to rest on the swing set, where a pair of vacant seats creaked and twisted in the wind. The swings pulled at me, begging me to sit down, pump my legs, and soar into the air. But the rusty chains—and the memory of the last time I’d sat in that spot—kept my feet rooted where they were, glued to the cracked concrete of the patio.
I closed my eyes and inhaled deeply, expecting the clean scent of lavender I remembered from my childhood. Instead, the foul stench of rot and decay invaded my nostrils. My eyelids flew open, and I glared at the overflowing garbage bins by the back door.
Reality so rarely measured up to dreams.
If this was a dream, I could stand still, awash in nostalgia until my mother’s shimmering form took shape at the edge of my vision. Then I would hear her voice, clear as the tinkling of wind chimes from the neighbor’s yard, calling my name.
But this was real life. I wasn’t likely to see her here.
Despite being fully rested from my nap, I felt like the world around me was cloaked in a layer of surreality, almost real but not quite, like an optical illusion my eyes were on the verge of seeing through. Darkness slowly gathered as the sun set behind the low hills far to the west, but I half expected to blink and find myself in total blackness. Then, just as they had too often in my nightmares, a pair of glowing red eyes would open in front of me.
I turned and squinted at the kitchen window, sure he would be standing there, watching me the way my mother always had. The window was empty, but I still reflexively checked for the piece of black tourmaline on the cord around my neck.
“Doing okay?” Graham asked. He sat on the patio, rubbing Striker’s ears as he watched me.
Her yellow eyes followed me around the yard as well, wide and upside down from her position in Graham’s lap. She lay on her back with each of her four legs sticking out in a different direction, in protest of her harness.
“I’m fine,” I said.
“Has it changed a lot?”
I closed my eyes again and pictured the yard as I’d known it as a child—and as I’d known it in my dreams. “It’s too quiet. In my memories, it’s always summer.”
“I like picturing tiny Mackenzie playing tag on the lawn with a bunch of other little kids.”
“Well… it was usually just me.”
“Really?” He raised an eyebrow. “No friends?”
I shrugged. “Not that I remember. Not here anyway.”
“Hmm.” He narrowed his eyes, but his lips curled upward in a sly smile. “Okay, I’m revising the image in my head. Now I see little Mackenzie hitting her goth phase a few years early, telling the kids at school about the ghosts in her bedroom and freaking everybody out.”
“I was not goth.” I didn’t bother disputing the rest. His imagined scenario was too close to reality for comfort, and it was only my extreme laziness toward makeup that kept me from wearing heavy eyeliner and purple lipstick. “And most people don’t have the luxury of growing up somewhere like Donn’s Hill, okay? In places like this”—I waved a hand at the back fence, indicating the suburban area around us—“people like to throw words like freak around.”
His smile vanished. “Oh, don’t worry. There were plenty of tiny tyrants at Donn’s Hill Elementary. Kids always find a way to make somebody feel bad for being different.”
I sat beside him and wrapped an arm around his waist, pulling him into a lopsided hug. “I wish we’d met earlier. I would’ve loved having a friend like you around.”
He squeezed me back. As we sat there, the breeze picked up and shook the surrounding trees. I shivered. My loose-knit pullover left far too many gaps and spaces to effectively block out the wind, and the cold seeped through my jeans from the concrete.
“It’s getting chilly.” Graham let go of my waist and rubbed my back with one hand. “I wish we could go inside.”
“Me too,” I said automatically, but it was a lie.
When we had first pulled up to the house, I just stared at it for a while, taking in the sameness of it. It was identical to the one in my memory, as though I’d only been gone twenty minutes instead of twenty years. Whoever bought the house after my mother’s passing hadn’t made any changes, not to the light pink stucco or the bark chips and succulents that crowded the tiny front yard.
It took me longer than I would have expected to find the strength to climb out of the truck. My legs felt limp beneath me as I crossed the short distance from the sidewalk to the front porch, and when I rang the doorbell, I found myself hoping nobody would answer.
Nobody did.
Reluctant as I was to step foot inside the house, I hadn’t been able to resist sneaking down the driveway and slipping into the backyard through the unlocked gate. Now, just in case this was my last chance to be here, I heaved myself to my feet and wandered over to the swing set. My fingers dragged lightly down the metal links, as cold as the last time I sat there. In my mind’s eye, I saw our neighbor Darlene round the corner from her driveway. A grim expression clouded her features as she explained to me how completely my life was about to change.
A sharp voice yanked me back to the present. “Excuse me, can I help you?”
Graham was on his feet, tucking Striker into the front of his zippered hoodie and backing toward me protectively as an angry-looking woman let herself through the back gate. I focused on her face and let out a tiny shriek of surprise.
There she stood, as though summoned by my very thoughts.
Darlene.
I hadn’t even bothered checking to see if she still lived in the house next door. I assumed that, like me, she had moved away a long time ago. Looking at her, I realized how little sense that made. Just because my life upended completely didn’t mean everyone else’s didn’t carry on as per usual. Obviously, Darlene had stayed right where she was, looking exactly the way I remembered her.
No, I realized as she squinted at Graham. She’s aged.
For some reason, that surprised me too. It was jarring to see the crinkles around her eyes and mouth and the encroaching gray at the roots of her hair.
She moved a few steps closer and asked Graham, “Do Jack and Diane know you’re here?”
A smile spread across my face. This was classic Darlene: bold, brave, and in everyone’s business—but in a good kind of way. She wasn’t the sort of neighbor who would ignore questionable activity in the next yard. She would put on her best housecoat, march back there, and make sure everything was on the up-and-up.
“Darlene, it’s me.” I waved at her, pulling her attention away from the tall man with the cat in his sweater. “Mackenzie Clair.”
The instant she saw me, recognition sparked in her eyes. She placed a hand over her heart. “Macky-bug?”
I cringed. I had forgotten that awful nickname. Graham coughed in a way that sounded suspiciously like laughter, and I realized with horror that he would never forget it.
“It’s just Mac these days.” I rubbed the back of my neck with one hand and ducked my head, feeling like a little kid.
Her body slammed into mine before I had a chance to look up, and her arms wrapped around me in a suffocatingly tight hug. Just when I thought I would have to shove her away so I could breathe again, she released me, pulling back to examine my face.
“Look at you! You’re all grown up. And—” Her voice broke, and she finished her thought in a whisper. “God, you’re just your mother’s clone, aren’t you?”
Her face was close enough to mine that I could trace her eyes as they landed on each of the features I inherited from my mother: the dark blue in my irises, the sharp edges of my cheekbones, the loose waves in my dark hair.
I cleared my throat and stepped backward, then introduced my companions. Darlene gave Graham an awkward half hug to avoid smashing Striker.
“How long are you in town?” she asked. “Do you have time for a cup of coffee?”
Graham perked up. “You don’t mind if we bring our cat?”
Darlene waved a dismissive hand. “No, no, that’s fine. Come on over whenever you’re ready.”
She slipped out through the back gate, and I looked at Graham.
“We can stay out here as long as you want,” he said.
I shivered, once more feeling the chill through my sweater. “It’s okay. I’m ready. Besides, it’s freezing.”
“Brrrllll,” Striker agreed, snuggling deeper into Graham’s hoodie.
We slipped out the way we’d come, closing the back gate behind us and returning to the sidewalk. Next door, Darlene’s house looked just the way I remembered. It was one of the few two-story homes in the neighborhood, and she’d painted the siding a vibrant green that exactly matched the Astroturf covering her front yard. Unlike my mother, Darlene hated gardening.
She threw open the door and ushered us inside, clearly excited to have guests. I stared around the living room, trying to recall if I’d ever actually been inside her house before.
I decided I hadn’t.
If it had looked like this when I was a kid, I would have remembered.
Furniture, plastic totes, and cardboard boxes crowded the room from edge to edge. A narrow, winding pathway had been kept reasonably clear, but we had to step over a toppled pile of newspapers to follow her into the kitchen.
“Sorry it’s so tight in here.” Darlene squeezed between a tall dresser and a television stand that held no television. “Nobody ever comes to the front door, so I mostly use this room for storage.”
The kitchen was blessedly uncluttered. Cupboards ringed three of the walls, leaving an open space in the center for a small table. Pale light from the setting sun peeked into the room from the window above the sink, which provided a clear view across Darlene’s driveway and into my mother’s old backyard. A door by the fridge led outside.
I wondered again if I had been in her house before, at least in this room. Everything from the pale yellow refrigerator to the sunflower-printed hand towels felt undeniably familiar.
“Sit down, sit down,” she said. “Cream in your coffee?”
“Yes, please.” I lowered myself onto a spindly stool I suspected had been rescued from a dumpster somewhere.
Graham took the metal folding chair next to me and released Striker from the indignity of her harness. She shook herself vigorously before setting to work investigating the crumb-littered recesses beneath the cupboards.
After pouring the coffee, Darlene leaned her elbows on the table and stared at me, joy still lighting up her face. “I can’t believe it’s really you. Tell me everything. What do you do for a living? Are you a librarian like you wanted?”
“Librarian?” I frowned. I had enjoyed Saturday morning story time at our local branch, but when I cast my mind back on my earliest career aspirations, all I could remember wanting to do was hang out with the Muppets or live in a castle in some unspecified—but probably royal—capacity.
“Do you remember that little card catalog you made out of a shoebox?” Darlene rested her chin in her palm, eyes dancing. “You wouldn’t let me borrow so much as a magazine from your mom unless I wrote my name on an index card.”
I laughed. “I don’t remember that at all.”
“She’s still pretty stingy about letting people borrow her books,” Graham said.
“That’s not true!” I protested.
“Really?” He raised one thick eyebrow. “I wanted to borrow your copy of For Whom the Bell Tolls last month and you said I was welcome to read it, but only in your apartment.”
“That’s because you read in the tub, and I don’t want my books to get wet. If you’d read like a normal person—”
“What, hunched over a bowl of cereal at the table?”
Darlene reached out and patted my hand. “You two are adorable.”
“I’m not a librarian.” I shifted in my seat, debating how to explain my profession. For one thing, I’d never had to tell someone I was a paranormal investigator before; someone else always seemed to, or people already knew before meeting me. “I work on a TV show called Soul Searchers. We… well, we sort of look into potential hauntings—you know, try to figure out what’s really going on.”
“You’re kidding,” Darlene said.
I blushed again. “Nope. That’s really what I do. I know it sounds kind of silly, but—”
“This is perfect.” Her eyes were very round. “I’m so glad you’re here. I’ve got a ghost upstairs.”