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CHAPTER SEVEN

I walked around the corner again, with Sebastian at my heels, and was surprised to see that the next room was a small sitting area that led down a few steps into a kind of greenhouse.

Have you seen that movie, Practical Magic?

The characters have the same kind of room in their house and that’s what this looked like—only bigger.

There were rows and rows of plants—all of them neatly labeled. Their names were written on flat, white wooden stakes that had been pushed point-down into the soil of each pot or planter.

After five years of neglect, you might have expected that all the plants would be dead, but actually the opposite was true—they were thriving. I wondered if the nosy, judgmental Orc had been coming in to water them. If so, that meant it was my responsibility now.

As this realization hit me, I looked over the vast array of greenery with dismay.

I’ve never had what you’d call a “green thumb.” In fact, it might be more accurate to say I have a brown thumb—as in, everything I try to grow dies.

I can’t tell you how many basil plants I’ve killed and how many herb gardens I’ve tried to start, only to see the seedlings wither away before they ever grew more than a couple of inches. Oh dear—this was going to be a problem.

I couldn’t deal with it now, however. All the plants looked good at the moment so, after a short tour to look at all the different varieties, I left the greenhouse room and continued.

Around the next corner and I found the downstairs bathroom, decorated in black and white tile and old-fashioned fixtures.

Another turn and I found myself back at the entryway of the house.

The front door was shut now, but it didn’t make me feel threatened.

I felt secure in the house—in Morris—like I belonged there.

I also really liked the way the different rooms led into each other.

I’ve never been a fan of the open-landscape floor plan that so many houses seem to have these days.

I like it when the rooms are separated from each other and each one serves a distinct function.

Of course, I hadn’t had a choice in my studio apartment—everything was all over the place because it was such a small space.

It was nice to think I’d be living somewhere with a place for everything and everything in its place and room to spread out if I wanted to.

“Well, I guess that’s it for the downstairs,” I told Sebastian. “Should we go look upstairs too?”

“Mmmrowww!” he answered and began leaping up the stairs, as frisky as a kitten. I grinned a little—I was glad my cat liked our new house too.

The stairway had a floral print wallpaper but it was done in muted colors—dusty rose and sage green, which made me think of the Orc again.

I didn’t even know his name—not like I wanted to, of course.

But how had I been able to speak to him so easily without a single word getting stuck in my throat?

That had never happened to me before—my words always got stuck around strangers.

Especially people who scared me and he certainly had—at first, anyway.

The actual term for my condition is “Selective Mutism” which, in my opinion, is a bad name.

It makes people think I can “select” where and who I want to talk with, which isn’t the case at all.

What it actually means is that I’m unable to talk in certain social situations or settings.

Some people who have Selective Mutism have trouble in school or work but they can speak normally in other places.

For me, the problem was much worse. I was almost never able to speak in school, but I couldn’t speak in places outside of it either.

And if the person I was trying to speak to was a stranger, forget it.

In fact, the only place I could really talk was at home to a person I already knew.

And since it’s really hard to get to know someone if you can’t talk to them in the first place, that made for a very lonely existence.

Of course, I can and do make friends on-line, but it’s always a painful experience when I have to go out in the world and buy something or meet someone I don’t know. I mostly just talk to Sebastian now that my Mom is gone—it’s easier that way.

My difficulty talking to strangers also means I haven’t had many romantic relationships.

I had a few back when I was younger—on-line relationships that progressed slowly to FaceTime situations and then, finally, to meeting in person.

Neither of them lasted, (yeah, there were only two,) because most guys aren’t that patient.

They get even less patient when it turns out you can’t actually have sex with them.

Which I can’t , because when I’m with a guy, I get so tense that everything below the belt tightens up.

(I think the medical term for it is “Vaginismus.”) It’s kind of the same thing that happens when my words get stuck in my throat, only it happens between my legs.

I can use a toy on myself but bring a man into the equations and I’m suddenly so tight there’s no getting anything in there.

I only tried to have sex once or twice before I gave up—it was excruciating and embarrassing and I kept feeling like I was going to have a panic attack the minute the guy tried to put it in me. So it seemed like I was destined to remain a virgin—at least, technically—for life.

My lack of a sex life used to worry me a lot, but that was before my Mom got sick with cancer.

After she was diagnosed I had no time to worry about myself—I spent almost all my free time caring for her. And since she finally passed two years ago, I hadn’t had the heart to try to find anyone to be with.

For someone like me, making a romantic attachment involves a great deal of emotional work and frankly, it’s exhausting. Especially when I know the relationship won’t go anywhere because I can’t have sex. I mean, why bother?

At this point in my life, I had pretty much decided that it would just be easier to adopt more cats and become the proverbial crazy old cat lady.

It might be a little bit lonely, but it wasn’t as scary and tiring as trying to find someone who wouldn’t get mad at me when I couldn’t give the waiter my order when we went out or have sex once we got back home.

Suddenly I wondered why I was thinking such depressing thoughts.

Here I was in my new house and it was gorgeous!

My only worry was how I was going to get my things from my old place in Florida.

I didn’t have anything but my cell phone—all my clothes, my purse with my single credit card, and my laptop—which was the way I worked and earned money—were all back in my studio apartment.

I didn’t have a car—it was another expense I couldn’t afford, even though I hated riding the bus. But in my old apartment, I’d been living right down the road from a Save-A-Lot, which was a discount grocery store. And of course, anything I couldn’t get there, I’d been able to order online.

I wondered uneasily what I was going to do for money if I couldn’t get my laptop and also where I was going to get groceries.

I seemed to have a memory of my Grandma canning things and putting them in big glass Mason jars down in the basement— was there a basement in the house that I’d missed?

Even if there was, how long could you live on canned foods—especially if Winter was right around the corner?

My worried thoughts were cut off as I came to the top of the stairs and saw the upper floor of the house.

There were four rooms—two on either end of a long hallway—and a bathroom in between. The door of the room closest to me was cracked open. I stepped up to it and pushed it wider, revealing a bedroom.

The room was neat and I thought maybe it had been my Grandma’s. On the full-sized bed was a crocheted afghan in blues and greens and purples. There were needlepoint pillows on the bed with sayings like,

“The Rules Don’t Count in Grandma’s House!” and

“Grandma’s House is Home.”

In the closet were lots of old-fashioned dresses and also more cardigans. The shoes were lined up neatly in rows and everything had the faint sweet, floral scent that I had smelled on the cardigan I was now wearing.

There were some pictures on the nightstands of the bed and I picked one up and looked at it.

It showed a little girl with thick black hair and pale grey eyes laughing and blowing bubbles.

Another showed the girl pointing at something with a look of wonder on her face.

Yet another showed her biting into a giant slice of watermelon which looked both messy and delicious.

“They’re me—they’re all me,” I murmured. I wished I could remember the exact memories the pictures showed, but all I got when I reached for them wass a blur of colorful half-recollections and the feeling of being loved and safe and happy.

After wandering around my Grandma’s room for a while, I checked out the room beside it, which turned out to be a sewing room.

There were several sewing machines set up with projects in various stages of completion.

There was a quilting frame too and plenty of yarn and needles for knitting and crocheting.

I wished that I could have learned to sew from my Grandma. Maybe I would take an on-line course or watch some YouTube videos and see what I could do, I thought as I left the room and went on with my tour.

The upstairs bathroom was beautiful. Like the downstairs it had black and white tile but unlike it, it also had a tub.

It was a gorgeous old claw-foot bathtub which looked deep enough to submerge even a plus-sized curvy girl like me up to the neck.

There were puffy pink towels in the small linen cupboard as well as a collection of bath salts and bubble bath.

I had another flash of memory while looking at the tub. I remembered being in it with the bubbles up to my chin, laughing and using the foam to make a unicorn horn for myself.