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Meg
September
Eight Weeks before the Election
All roads lead back to Canyon Drive. Once again, I find myself sitting in my car, staring at my childhood home. How many times have I parked in this exact spot? How many hours have I lost, remembering the way we were tossed out, clothes hastily shoved into garbage bags, no time to even put on my shoes as the sheriff stood in the foyerand neighbors wandered onto their driveways and wide lawns to watch.
But today is different. Today I’m doing the final walk-through with my buying clients, Gretchen and Rick. Clients I poached from a colleague after I overheard him talking about what kind of a house they needed. A few phone calls, a coincidental encounter at an open house, an off-the-record opportunity, not even listed yet. Who wouldn’t jump at the chance to snag a property in today’s competitive market?
Canyon Drive will be closing tomorrow, and Ron has moved into a hotel until we can find him something more fitting for a state senator, a necessary pivot away from income properties that were never part of my plan. And now I will be going back inside my home—not for the first time, but for the last.
The first time had been just over a month ago in early August, to show the house to Gretchen and Rick. Ron had been there as well, so I’d had to keep my expression curious and open.
I’d been surprised by how much had changed. The floors were now stained dark instead of the blond wood I remembered. The brick fireplace had been refaced in marble, and the kitchen was completely new. But as I’d stood at the sink staring out the window and into the backyard, the view had been exactly as I’d remembered it. The same lawn sloping down toward the tall hedges in back. The sycamore tree, the shape of its branches exactly the same, all the way down to the pocket where two of the larger limbs met, the width of my hips, the perfect spot to read or hide from my mother and Ron.
I’d led Gretchen and Rick through the rooms on the main floor, Ron opting to wait outside while we looked around. Upstairs, I somehow managed to show them the features — the primary bedroom and bath, a balcony off the seating area, gesturing to the doorway of my old bedroom. “Guest plus bath,” I’d said, letting Gretchen and Rick enter alone, not wanting the memories of those last few months to clutter my mind.
Today, though, I’m early. I glance at my phone again, hoping I’ll see something from Kat. She’s been quiet for weeks, ignoring my texts and calls. Veronica hasn’t heard from her either. A flicker of worry passes through me as I imagine her trying to figure out how to pay off that credit card on her own. There’s no way she can manage it on what she’s been writing lately—articles about cuticle care and the power of essential oils.
I’m almost certain Kat believes I was the one who opened the credit card and ran up all that debt. I don’t know exactly how much she knows about where I’ve been for the past ten years, but every job I’ve done would indicate I’m exactly who she thinks I am—a con artist, an opportunist, twisting reality to suit my purposes. Setting up a politician with one hand while simultaneously stealing money from a down-on-her-luck journalist with the other. Which means she’ll be even more determined to expose me. To write something that will not only pay well, but finally open the door to bigger publications. I knew this was who she was from the beginning; I can’t be angry with her about it now.
I flip through my keys until I find the right one. “The front door is made of oak, milled from a forest in Virginia. A tree that probably greeted the colonists of Jamestown before arriving here to keep us safe.” My words a quiet whisper under the covered porch that still smells exactly as I remember—grass and mildew from stucco that never completely dries.
I step into the cool foyer, taking in the space. The house is now empty of Ron’s horrible chrome and leather furniture, and I can let the ghosts return. Take the time to finally say goodbye. I move through the downstairs, past the main staircase with a window seat on the landing, passing into a family room once lined with bookshelves.
The house may be different, but its landmarks are the same. The railing on the wall as I ascend the back staircase is the same texture, with the same divots and dips in the wood. I run my hand along it, reacquainting myself. The fourth stair still creaks in exactly the same way I remember, and I spend a minute there, passing up and down, just so I can hear it. I close my eyes, pretending my mother is still alive, still in the house with me, just out of sight around the corner; any moment she’ll speak. Hurry up, slowpoke.
A dog barking from a distant yard snaps me back to the present. I continue up the stairs, making my way to my old bedroom, the one with the dormer window overlooking the backyard and the walk-in closet where the slant of the roof meets the floor at a 45-degree angle.
I stand in the middle of the space, trying to find my younger self, but it’s hard. Nothing is the same. The paint, flooring, and moldings—it’s all been replaced, though the upgrades are cheap. Plastic blinds on the windows instead of wood, fiberglass in the bathrooms instead of the original porcelain.
I turn toward the closet, hoping Ron has somehow left it alone, and reach for the knob, holding tight to the memory of the interior wall marked with scuffs from my shoes. The sagging rod where I’d once hung my clothes. And in the back, on the far wall, the scratches and hash marks of a height chart. I can still see them in my mind, horizontal lines, and next to them, Nana’s faded handwriting.
Rosie 8-27-78
Rosie 12-17-82
And in darker marker, my mother’s writing, as familiar as a song I know by heart.
Meggie 2-4-93
Meggie 10-26-98
But when I turn the knob and open the closet, a light illuminates automatically, revealing the laminate shelving of a California Closets installation. The air is sterile, the floor beneath my feet shiny, the wall I remembered and everything written on it relegated to a garbage dump years ago.
I exit the room quickly and make my way down the front stairs, through the dining room, and into the backyard, the only place left that carries a hint of the people I loved. I brush my hand along the trunk of the sycamore tree as I make my way toward the back corner, where Nana’s roses still sway and dance in the slight breeze—eighteen bushes planted nearly sixty years ago, when she was a young mother herself. Before her only son’s downward spiral into drugs and alcohol.
This is the only place left where I can still feel her—and the memories rush at me. Long afternoons spent turning the soil, searching the leaves for aphids with my spray bottle of soapy water. She taught me the names of each variety—Burst of Joy, Moonlight in Paris, Double Delight—and I whisper the names under my breath like a mantra.
It’s a small miracle they’re still here, that Ron hadn’t pulled them out and installed a fire pit or a hot tub. I reach down and pick up a few fallen petals and smell them—the sweet fragrance carrying me back in time.
“Meg, are you here?”
Rick’s voice from inside pulls me back to the present, and all the pain and resentment I’ve harbored over the last decade snaps back into place, fitting into the grooves and edges I’ve carved for them. I let the petals fall to the ground.
“Out here,” I call, making my way into the house, where they’re waiting in the foyer. Rick, a partner at a downtown law firm, and Gretchen, his homemaker wife. Not the anonymous industry power couple I’d led Kat to believe. Perception is everything. Nameless, faceless clients who value their privacy force a person to fit those details into a story. Because when you leave a trail of breadcrumbs, people expect them to lead somewhere.
“Shall we start in the kitchen?” I ask, my smile genuine.
***
“You can pick up the keys at the Apex office tomorrow. I’ll call you the minute it’s officially yours,” I say when we’re done.
I watch them drive away, and it isn’t until I’m unlocking my car that I see him. Scott, Kat’s fiancé, behind the wheel of an older model Toyota sedan, watching me.
I recognize him from Kat’s Facebook profile. Once I knew her real name, it was easy to find her online, and then him. Scott Griffin, fraud detective. I read about cases he worked. I scoured Facebook for photos—Scott at the beach, on a ski vacation, laughing in front of a giant cactus in the desert. There’s no question it’s him.
I let my gaze slide over him, keeping my motions measured and smooth. As I pull away from the curb, I let myself glance once in my rearview mirror, the pinch of betrayal sharp. They’re working together.
