Page 5 of You Belong Here

She quickly disappeared up the narrow steps behind the kitchen.

I had no desire to sleep up there anyway.

My parents had left my room exactly as I’d abandoned it, the walls covered in quotes I’d accumulated over time.

They circled the room on pieces of glued-down paper, or hung in frames, or written in paint or Sharpie taken directly to the wall.

Once upon a time, they’d brought me comfort, made the world feel smaller—connecting strangers across time.

But I found them disorienting now, like the past was whispering from the walls.

It was just like my parents to want to preserve it—a living history. Another version of me, in a different lifetime. Maybe the one they believed I would become.

But Delilah loved it up there. She loved the history that you could see all around us.

My mother was still staring at the narrow steps behind the kitchen where Delilah had disappeared.

“I’m surprised she wanted to come here,” she said, lowering her voice. She turned to look at me slowly, waiting for me to fill in the blanks. My mother never wore makeup, but there was a flush to her cheeks now. Some emotion simmering under her words.

“I thought it might’ve been your idea.” Planting the seed, drawing her home—like she was righting a wrong, making up for the fact that I’d left.

She shook her head. “No, but then kids always like to keep you on your toes, don’t they, Beck?” She smiled tightly, then left the room, her final words trailing behind her.

Maybe she was right; maybe I deserved this.

Hadn’t I done the same to her? I hadn’t told my parents I was pregnant with Delilah until I came back from my year abroad, visibly showing—something already tangible instead of hypothetical.

They were confused, disoriented, by the sudden existence of what was to come.

I remembered the heat of my mother’s gaze, the cool shock of her words.

She wanted me to stay home with them, claiming I’d need help—that I’d need their help. That I had no idea what to expect; that I wasn’t ready.

But I couldn’t stay. I felt only the claustrophobia of the mountains.

The accusations of the people who lived here fresh in my memory, even after a full year away.

A nausea that seemed to creep in from the mere proximity.

I couldn’t stand to look out my bedroom window and see the rise of campus, the place the smoke once billowed above the trees.

I couldn’t raise a child here—not with the presence of the past like it existed beside us.

I didn’t want their help. I didn’t want anyone’s. I knew by then that I was better on my own. Had gotten through that last year by trusting only myself and my own decisions.

I’d graduated after an extra semester that winter, and then I’d moved to Charlotte by myself—had already lined up a job in marketing and graphic design.

A few years later, when the logistics of preschool and childcare became tougher to juggle, I’d leveraged my experience in copywriting for an audition with a ghostwriting agency.

I’d had a steady stream of work ever since.

I’d met friends who had become like family. Gone on dates here and there. But for the last eighteen years, I had devoted myself fully to my daughter—and my career. It was a simple life but a meaningful one—and, more importantly, it was the right one for me.

I had created an entire second life for myself by leaving, and it had begun with Delilah.

The futon in my father’s office was set against the wall under the window, across from his large cherry desk.

But the gauzy curtains did nothing to prevent the glare of the full moon, long shadows falling across the assortment of artifacts that doubled as decor: tiny figurines across the edge of his desk; chipped pottery on the bookshelves; and the masks, of course.

They lined the walls in a zigzag pattern—hollow faces and empty eyes.

Things that seemed better suited for a museum.

Some were gifts from colleagues and former students, or items he’d picked up at markets around the world.

He’d once loaned a good portion of his collection to an exhibit for the school.

I imagined he was bringing some of the pieces to show his students in Peru, carefully cocooned within the boxes in the foyer.

I opened the window, hoping for a breeze, but felt only the thick humidity. I needed to move, to walk off the day’s adrenaline, so I slipped on my sneakers and stepped through the window gap directly onto the front porch, careful not to wake anyone.

There were no streetlights, but the front porch lights of a few of the houses remained on.

I could see the dark gap of night where the house should have been at the far end of the street.

I felt myself drawn there, just like others must’ve been earlier—passing by on their way to campus, taking note.

Something out of place. Something wrong.

I stood in the middle of the empty street.

Shadowed cars lined the curbs, from resident parking.

In the distance, behind the gaping plot of land, dim lights trailed up the hillside, Wyatt College coming back to life from its summer hibernation.

I saw a lonely glow of blue in the darkness from a campus security system.

One of the safety additions in the last twenty years.

I walked down the street and stopped just before the wreckage.

The dumpster sat at the edge of where the lawn once was, before a pile of blackened wood and debris, rotted from both the flames and the water. Yellow tape that I hadn’t noticed at first traced the perimeter but had fallen to the ground, twisted and half covered with dirt.

I took a step back just as a noise jarred me from the dumpster. I turned on the light from my phone and shone it around but saw no one.

I climbed onto a stack of cinder blocks beside the dumpster, then carefully peered over the edge, wondering if an animal had gotten trapped inside.

At the bottom, the waterlogged wood appeared dark and splintered. There were also seared photographs, blackened at the edges, soot-covered silverware and broken dishes, and for a moment, I wondered if my mother had lied after all about the house being empty.

A glow in the bottom corner caught my eye.

A scent rose from below—a lingering smoke. An ember left burning.

No, I thought. Not after two weeks. This was something fresh. New.

The glowing edge of a match, yellow-red. I watched as it faded to nothing, finally extinguished. A wisp of smoke the only thing left behind.

A warning that I wasn’t alone out here.