Chapter 2 - The Sound of a Door Closing Forever
By eleven-forty, the living room looked like a disaster zone of crumpled wrapping paper, empty soda cans, and half-eaten paper plates. Aunt Evelyn had finally left, complaining loudly about the humidity and the quality of the coffee, and my cousins had piled into their SUV with enough leftover cake to feed a small army.
Grace was helping me stack the plastic cups by the sink.
“Your dad was weird tonight,” she said, wiping her hands on a paper towel. “Like... extra twitchy. Even for him.”
“He’s stressed about money,” I said, scraping cake crumbs into the trash. “He’s been talking about property taxes going up since April. That’s why I’ve been picking up extra shifts at Maple Street. I’m paying my own way, Grace. Every cent.”
“I know you are,” she said softly, leaning against the counter. “You’re more adult than both of them combined. Honestly, Maya, once you start classes in January, you should look into renting that little loft apartment above the bakery near campus. It’s tiny, but at least you wouldn’t have to listen to your mom complain about the water bill every time you wash your hair.”
“In January,” I agreed, nodding. “Just gotta get through the fall.”
“Well, I’m freezing. Can I grab my hoodie from your car? You left it in the back seat earlier when we went to get ice.”
“Sure. Here’s the key.” I tossed her my keyring. “I’m gonna go find my phone. I left it on the console too.”
“Don’t take all night,” Grace called out as she pushed open the front door and stepped out into the steady, lukewarm drizzle of the late-summer night.
I walked out to the hallway, patting my pockets. My phone wasn’t in my hoodie. I must have dropped it between the bucket seats when I reached for the ice bags.
As I walked toward the front door to follow Grace, I noticed the front closet door—the one where we kept the winter coats and the vacuum cleaner—was slightly ajar. A thin strip of yellow light spilled out from the bottom.
I pushed it open.
The closet was empty.
Not just messy empty. Scoured empty. The cedar hangers were gone. The rubber boots my mother insisted we wear during spring thaws were missing. Even the shelf where we kept the spare umbrellas was wiped clean down to the bare wire mesh.
“Mom?” I called out, my voice sounding small in the quiet house.
No answer.
I walked down the short hallway toward the stairs. The door to my bedroom—the room at the end of the hall, the one with the sloping ceiling and the pale blue walls I’d painted myself when I was twelve—was closed.
That was weird. Mom hated closed doors. She said they trapped stale air and encouraged laziness.
I reached out, grabbed the brass knob, and pushed it down.
Click.
Locked.
I frowned, rapping my knuckles against the wood. “Mom? Are you in here?”
Still nothing. But from behind the door, I heard something faint—a rhythmic scraping sound, like someone dragging a heavy box across a hardwood floor.
“Mom, open up. My phone’s in the car and Grace is outside.”
The scraping stopped. A moment later, the lock clicked back, and the door swung open six inches.
My mother was standing in the middle of my room. She wasn't holding cleaning supplies. She was holding a black Hefty trash bag filled with my winter sweaters.
Her face was completely bloodless. Her lips were pressed into a thin, white line that looked like a scar.
“Mom? What are you doing?”
She didn’t drop the bag. She didn’t even flinch. She just looked past me, her eyes glazed with a terrifying, robotic calm.
“You need to go, Maya,” she said. Her voice didn’t tremble. It was flat, like a recorded announcement at a train station.
“Go where? Grace is outside getting her hoodie—”
“Your father is downstairs. He’ll explain everything.” She stepped forward, brushing past me with the trash bag, her shoulder hitting mine with deliberate, heavy force. “We’ve made arrangements.”
“Arrangements for what?” I spun around, following her down the hall. “Mom, stop it! What is going on?”
May you like
She didn’t answer. She walked straight into the master bedroom and closed the door behind her with a soft, final click.
I stood in the hallway for three seconds—three seconds where the entire logic of my eighteen years on earth unraveled like a cheap sweater—before I turned and ran down the stairs.
