Page 44 of You Belong Here

There was nothing we could do to make Delilah leave. She was stubborn. She was also eighteen. She had her own scholarship. An adult, whether I wanted to believe it or not, responsible for her own decisions.

Maybe she was right anyway. What good would running do? It only prolonged the problem, held the dangers at arm’s length, always threatening to reemerge years later—as if you could never be free of them.

She came down before dinner less upset and maybe a little contrite.

All of her friends had checked in by then— not them —though she didn’t seem able to relax. But this was good news, and Trevor asked if she’d help with dinner. A way to take her mind off things. A feign—or a fight—for normalcy.

Trevor’s macaroni bake was apparently Delilah’s favorite when she visited him in the summers, something that brought to mind comfort and childhood.

I watched as they worked side by side in the kitchen—Delilah making the side salad, plopping the bread in the oven—like a view into a part of her life I’d never had access to before.

I knew Trevor was a good father. Knew it from the way she spoke of him, the stories she told, the pictures he sent, the questions he asked.

I knew it even before she was born. It was never a question in my mind.

But I hadn’t gotten to see it. Not like this.

They had a rhythm that was different from the way Delilah and I interacted, another cadence to their conversation—but still something comfortable and familiar. Here was a person she would trust with her secrets.

“Mom, wait till you try this,” she said, spoon in hand at the counter.

The scent had brought me back nineteen years, to the first time he’d cooked for me. “I already have,” I said.

Trevor paused only briefly, eyes shifting from me to Delilah. “I have very few tricks up my sleeve, kid.”

We ate together at the kitchen table, with Delilah’s phone for company.

I always hated it when she brought her phone to the table for a meal, but right now we were letting everything slide.

The truth was, we were waiting for updates, too.

And it was highly likely Delilah would hear through the grapevine first.

I jumped with every text. Watched as she read each message, trying to gauge her reaction.

Abruptly, she dropped her fork, then turned the most recent message my way. “The lockdown was lifted,” she said. “They’re letting people in again.”

“Okay, that’s good,” I said, looking to Trevor for reassurance. That had to be good. They must’ve gotten answers, and they hadn’t come back here looking for them.

The body must’ve been someone local, I decided, if the school was opening again. A girl from town, running through the night, trespassing. A tragic accident. But something they could claim, once more, was not their fault .

We were cleaning up from dinner when the sound of the dryer buzzing carried from the basement again.

I was first down the stairs for the laundry, but Trevor was only a few steps behind, apparently incapable of letting me handle this one task for him. Not that I should be one to speak; I’d probably do the same if the roles were reversed.

“She seems better, right?” he asked, now that we were out of earshot. As if that were the real reason he’d followed me.

“She does,” I said. “What did she talk about on your trip to the mall?”

“What do you mean?” he asked, peering up the steps to the partially open doorway.

“I feel like there are things she’s not telling me,” I said. I thought she’d stayed in the room upstairs, but she’d denied it. And yet I’d seen the toothpaste and the wet towel hanging askew. The next-door neighbors had seen lights on at night upstairs. “I didn’t even know she asked you for money.”

I was realizing that she hadn’t been telling me things for weeks. She’d gone to her father instead.

He took a slow breath, like he was thinking before he spoke.

“She hasn’t said much. But I’m not pushing.

” Which was probably a better move than my attempt to extract information.

“We listened to the radio most of the way. She wanted to know why you called me down here. And, for your entertainment, she asked how long we planned to babysit her.”

I rolled my eyes. Only an eighteen-year-old would fail to see why her parents had both come to search for her when she went missing in the woods. Or why they’d stayed when someone had died in an accident on campus.

“Did you know she was struggling here?” I asked.

He scraped the side of his shoe against the concrete floor, frowning at the dirt he left behind. “Not in so many words. But she’d been reaching out more often, with fun facts.” He looked up at me, a small smile growing. “Like, did I know you were named for a building here.”

I looked off to the side before the past could grab hold of me again. Like Samuel Beckett?

“I didn’t, for the record,” he said. “As you know.”

When I looked back, he was grinning.

“Who wants to admit that they’re named after a building where their parents both worked?” I asked.

“And,” he continued, “did I know why you left the college.”

I didn’t respond. Felt time contracting again—but farther back. To snow-peaked mountains and the bite of winter wind; the crunch of boots and the feeling of cold deep in my lungs—

“I told her I did know that one,” he said, “but that she should really ask you about that.”

I shook my head, surprised. “She didn’t.”

She knew enough: There had been a horrible accident, and my roommate was involved. There was so much attention, the school asked me to leave. Maybe my parents had told her more. I was sure she could read a more salacious version online. Lord knows I had.

But whenever I shared our story, it started in the after: I went abroad, and then you were born . The history of her life began out there. I may have existed because of this place, yes. But you exist, I wanted to tell her, because I left.

I’d opened the dryer, felt the heat escaping, when Trevor spoke again. “She also asked—not for the first time—why we didn’t work out.”

“Huh,” I said, still facing away.

When I turned back, he was standing close, with a crooked grin. “Yeah.”

“That’s something she hasn’t asked me in years.” Maybe she was comparing our stories, deciding whose was stronger—or who was at fault. “I told her we were very young,” I said. Which we were, in more ways than age.

I’d been twenty-two and hadn’t yet learned to treat people well, with a grace of time. I couldn’t slip happiness into focus then—my imagination kept reaching back instead of forward—and I didn’t believe he would choose me if he knew me better.

And he’d been twenty-three, incapable of seeing a life different from the one he’d planned.

“That’s generous,” he said. “I told her the truth. That I didn’t handle the news of her right.”

I cringed, imagining her hearing that and trying to process.

The truth was, he was always better at the concrete than the hypothetical.

Had to see something in person, hold something tangible and real.

She never would’ve known that if he hadn’t told her.

By the time she was two, he was living back in the States, and he’d asked if he could visit for birthdays and holidays.

And then he’d started asking for more: a weekend, a week, a month.

They had a different type of relationship than Delilah and I did, but it was a real one.

“I didn’t respond the right way. I know that,” he added—like he needed to tell me, too.

“I didn’t give you the time to,” I said.

I had been afraid also. For weeks. Afraid that I’d be a terrible parent. That I wouldn’t be able to decipher what she needed. That she would always be a mystery to me. But our relationship had been nothing like I’d feared.

Until recently, I’d thought she told me everything.

“I can’t shake it, Trevor,” I said. “This feeling that she’s still in danger.” I was sensing it everywhere: in the creak of an open gate; the writing on the wall; the police asking questions about her whereabouts that night, like she was a suspect instead of a child.

I wanted him to tell me it was all in my head. That I was stuck in a spiral. I thought I’d believe him if he said it.

“Me, too,” he said, frowning.

But then he stepped closer and placed his hand on my wrist, taking my pulse with two fingers on the line of the mountain ridge. He closed his eyes like he was keeping time. I felt the blood racing through my veins, like something was still coming.

“But she’s okay,” he said. “She’s right here.”

And so was he.

“By the way,” I said, turning my arm so the tattoo faced up, “this isn’t a heartbeat.”

He laughed, rubbed his thumb along the peaks and valleys.

“It’s the mountains,” I said. “It’s here.”

“Okay,” he said, his breath low and husky, pulling my arm closer. “I see it now. Beckett Bowery, named for a building, with a tattoo of home.”

I moved my hand to the side of his face, felt the warmth of his skin as I ran my thumb against the stubble, down to his jaw. I watched as his eyes drifted shut for a moment, and I closed the space between us, pulling his head down to mine—transported, once more, in time.

I knew things now that I hadn’t known then. There would never be a right time. Never quite enough time.

But he was right: Here we were, right now, in the present.

The door creaked at the top of the stairs.

“Hellooo?” Delilah called, her voice echoing down the stairwell. “I think someone’s here!”

“We’ll be right up!” I yelled as Trevor stepped back, laughing under his breath. Fitting, I thought, that the moment would be broken by our eighteen-year-old daughter.

Trevor handed me a laundry basket from the metal shelving as I gathered the clothes from the dryer.

“Not to point out an obvious question, but why is there an antique clock in your basement?” he asked.

“Trevor,” I said, partly exasperated, “that clock is the least strange thing about this place.” I gestured to the single cabinet set into the cinder-block wall beside the steps.

“Go upstairs and I’ll send your laundry up the dumbwaiter.

” I was fighting to stay in this moment—for the normalcy of it, or maybe the promise of it.

His eyes widened, following my gaze. “You’re kidding,” he said.

“Creepy, right?”

“Where does it go?” he asked.

“A corner of the kitchen. Trust me, you’ll know it when you see it.”

Though the dumbwaiter door was made of the same wood as the rest of the cabinets, it was clearly set apart, opening directly into an empty space in the drywall.

Trevor’s steps echoed on the wooden stairs as I brought the laundry basket over to the corner of the basement. The dumbwaiter had been built directly into the cinder-block wall, like it was a part of the original home structure.

The automated press-and-hold button was on the outside, in a simple up/down mechanism. The system ran from the floor to the ceiling through a hollow shaft directly in the unfinished bones of the house.

I opened the cabinet, but the dumbwaiter wasn’t visible. Only the dust, seeming to hover in the gap. I pressed the button to bring the device down, and a dull buzz filled the space as the box slowly lowered into position.

I released the button as the dumbwaiter box came into view.

Something was already inside.

I dropped the laundry basket to the floor, staring into the box, my heart racing.

A phone. Neon gel writing on the case; a single word, hand-drawn: Delilah.