Page 83 of All the Things We Buried

Same jawline. Same scar near the brow. Her skin looked almost translucent, like she had drowned. Around her neck, she wore my mother’s necklace. The one she promised to me on my eighteenth birthday.

I reached up with a trembling hand, my fingers hovering near her cheek. When I touched her, her skin was icy and wet.

Her eyes opened. White. Empty. Then she screamed.

A raw sound tore through the room. I screamed too. Not only in fear. In recognition.

She showed me. She showed me myself.

She revealed the past, who I had been. She showed me the future, too. But the future was empty. Not there at all.

I climbed out of bed with legs that barely obeyed me. The hallway tilted beneath me. I saw the door standing open. From inside came a faint voice singing a lullaby.

Her lullaby. I stepped into the room. And there she was. My mother.

She sat in her old rocking chair, just like I remembered. For the first time in what felt like forever, she smiled at me. She opened her arms.

“Come,” she whispered.

I didn’t hesitate.

I ran to her. The door slammed shut behind me as I fell into her hug. Her arms wrapped around me. Cold. So cold. But it was her. That was enough.

When you have lost someone you love, truly lost them, even their ghost feels like home.

She reached into her pocket and pulled out the necklace.

“It’s yours now,” she said, fastening it around my neck. She kissed my forehead just before she left the room.

“Mommy, where are you going?”

She turned without answering and walked down the stairs. I followed, but something stopped me.

Something pulled me back. A tight grip around my neck.

I gasped, stumbling. Looked up. A rope. It hung from the chandelier above the staircase.

And as I looked down, I saw Dorian.

“Lenore, no!” he shouted from below. “Stay where you are. I am coming.”

But everything moved again.

Mom was at the door now. Dorian stood beside her, holding our bags. We were supposed to leave. It had been our plan. He reached out.

“Come on, Lenore,” he said.

And I jumped. I did not think. I knew.

Death, my love, is not the end.

It is the moment the veil lifts and everything is laid bare. I saw it all flash before me. Every warning the house gave. Every creak, whisper, and dream.

The house was never haunting me. It was trying to warn me. And I did not listen.

I don’t know how to say this without sounding like I’ve given up. Maybe I have. But not in the way people think. Not in some dramatic, cinematic way. It’s quieter than that. Slower. Like a candle burning from the inside out.

I’ve been dying for a long time. Not in body, but in everything else.