Free Sample
Preview from chapter one
The last time I stood in the mud room, I’d been seventeen and high on amphetamines, listening to my mother tell me how disappointed she was in me for the thousandth time. I didn’t even remember leaving the house that night, just the afterimage of her face, skin shining in the halogen lamp over the kitchen sink, the purse of her mouth like the asshole of a dying star.
Now, twenty years later, I was back. I let myself in through the back window, crowbar angled just right to keep the glass from shattering, only splintering enough to unseat the lock and wiggle the pane free. I could have used the key I still remembered in its hiding spot, duct taped inside the mouth of the garden frog, but it was about the principle of the thing.
Inside, the air had that sour, lived-in tang: spent detergent, waxy linoleum, and the undertone of pet dander even though the last pet had probably died half a decade ago. The familiar floor plan reassembled itself around my feet with each step, muscle memory more reliable than any blueprint. Kitchen to the left, living room straight, bedrooms at the end of the hallway, past the grandfather clock my mother swore was an antique but probably came from Sears.
I went silent down the hallway, avoiding the third floorboard from the end, which always squeaked, and paused at the crack of her bedroom door. There was a sound, faint but not unfamiliar - the sharp intake of breath after a bad dream, the restless turning of sheets. I waited, listening. In the almost-black, I could see her silhouette, mouth open on the pillow, hair spread out like something drowned.
The mother of my childhood was never beautiful, but she had a quality that made people linger. A regal bearing, the dark, liquid eyes of a carnivore, patience and hunger both. Twenty years and she still had that predatory watchfulness, even in sleep. I stood in the threshold, backlit by the hallway nightlight, and let the silence curdle. After a long moment, she lifted her head, eyes glittering even in the gloom.
“Who’s there?” Her voice was groggy, but the fear was already there underneath.
I said nothing. Stepped forward so the nightlight outlined my shoulders. I’d inherited her height and something of her jawline, which probably made the resemblance all the more uncanny at this hour. I saw her try to process the shape of me, the math in her eyes, and then the flicker of recognition.