The sink itself was full of a uniform dark brown mass that could have been anything once. It looked like chocolate pudding, but I could guarantee it wasn’t.
As I glanced around at the remains of the kitchen, I could feel trickles of sweat running down my neck despite the frigid house. I couldn’t fix this. It had taken years to get it this bad; how was I supposed to fix it overnight?
I wrapped my jacket tighter around me and wished for more time. A few days—a week, maybe, and I could have this place looking okay enough to let people in. It’s not like I had to make it perfect, just good enough so it wasn’t a freak show.
A draft of cold air came from somewhere and brushed against my cheek. It was so cold inside, I could see my breath hang in front of me. It felt almost colder in here than it did outside, and, without the furnace working, this whole place was turning into one giant freezer. I’d have to keep moving or I’d freeze to death along with her.
Oh my God—my stomach did a flip-flop as the idea started to form. It was freezing in here!
A glimmer of hope started flickering inside me as I picked my way to the other side of the room as fast as I could, my thoughts racing one step ahead. This was totally crazy and totally wrong and totally the only hope I had at all.
The smell near the sink was so bad I had to hold my breath as I worked the windows halfway open. The moldy curtains waved listlessly in the breeze as the frigid air worked its way inside. The window in the laundry room was stuck pretty tight, but I did manage to open it a crack, and I hoped it was enough. With this many windows open in the back of the house, it would probably drop the temperature close to actual freezing. It almost never got cold enough to snow around here, but I’d heard on the radio that there was a frost warning this week, just in time for New Year’s Eve. The timing couldn’t be better.
The answer had been staring me in the face this whole time. The cold. As long as I could get it cold enough, Mom would… keep… until I had time to make things look better. I didn’t know that much about dead bodies, but I’d watched enough cop shows to know the cold would buy me a couple of days before things got too bad. And a couple of days might be all it took to make the difference between normal and newsworthy.
I could never keep track of the days during vacation, and it took a minute to figure out today was Tuesday. That meant I had until at least Thursday morning, maybe Friday, before Mom would have to be “discovered.” I could spend the next couple of days cleaning the place up, and then go to Kaylie’s to spend the night. When I came home in the morning, I could “find” Mom on the floor in a normal-looking house that contained a normal amount of stuff—lying dead in a normal position, not buried under a mountain of magazines in a house that looked like a landfill. If I closed all the windows before I left, it should warm up enough in here to make it look like she’d just died.
Two more years until I could have a normal life had seemed like an eternity, and suddenly it was like the universe was handing me a chance to have all of it ahead of schedule. There was only ten tons of garbage standing in the way.
I rushed back through the pathway, out of the kitchen, and down to my room at the end of the hall to grab my wallet. I’d need garbage bags—the big, black ones made for moments like this. As far as I knew, we didn’t even own any. I stood in my open doorway and felt my heartbeat slow and the knot in my stomach loosen. I kicked the door shut behind me, blocking out the smell and the mess, and took a deep breath.
The flutter of panic that had been whirling in my head was being replaced by something else. I felt a little guilty for the warmth of optimism that was spreading throughout my body at a time when I should have been devastated, but there it was. For once in my life, I was in charge. If I worked hard enough, I could keep Kaylie and Josh and the glimmer of a normal life that had started to form.
Was it selfish? Absolutely. It wasn’t like I could do anything to save Mom at this point, but I could do something to help me. But I wasn’t just doing it for me. I was doing it for Phil and his girlfriend and Sara too. In a way, I was even doing it for Mom. She could still be the hardworking single parent everybody thought she was. Now Nadine and everybody else who knew her wouldn’t have to change their memories.
As I looked around my bedroom at the clean surfaces and my neatly made bed, I could feel some energy return deep inside. I could do this. I didn’t help Mom last night, but I could help all of us now.
Taking one last look around my room, I gathered strength from the peaceful space. Mom was dead—there was nothing I could do about that. Local history would remember us either as that garbage-hoarding freak family on Collier Avenue, or as the nice oncology nurse with the lovely children.
It was up to me to decide which one was our truth.
chapter 4
11:00 a.m.
Our street was one of those that had ridden the roller coaster of good times and bad, and it showed in the little details, like fine wrinkles around an otherwise pretty face. You could tell it had once been a really nice neighborhood because the houses were set back from the street and most of them had big porches, but the old Toyota up on blocks in the Harveys’ driveway and the weeds that choked out any grass in the yard on the corner told a different story. The houses were old, but mostly in a good way, and each one had a big yard, which meant the neighbors weren’t so close that they were always peeking in your windows. Keeping nosy neighbors away was a good thing as far as I was concerned.
I shifted the bag of cleaning supplies to my left hand and unlocked the front door with my right. As the door swung open, bits of mail caught in the bottom and made a scratching sound along the tile floor. I kicked the mail to the side, where it joined the pile from yesterday.
Standing in the hallway, I stopped to listen. I wasn’t sure what I was listening for, but the whole house was silent. Dead silent. I knew Mom was lying in the back hallway, but just for one moment, I wanted to pretend I was coming through the door for the first time today. Mom was at work, I was coming home from Kaylie’s with the warmth of Josh’s arm still on my shoulders, and none of this was my problem. Yet.
Our entry hall was wide, with the living room on the right and the dining room on the left. Piles of belongings, newspapers, and green plastic bins draped with clothing started at the edges of each room and marched toward the center until the only way to maneuver through the stuff was to turn sideways and pray you would reach your destination unscathed.
On the other side of the living room was the fireplace mantle, which held a brown, spindly potted plant that had been dead for years and a couple of framed pictures. I stood on my tiptoes so I could see them better. The picture on the right was my school picture from fourth grade. I was wearing my sweatshirt jacket, and Mom had gotten mad at me because I forgot to take it off for picture day so my new shirt would show. I remember when Aunt Jean put the picture in the big gold frame and set it on the mantle. It was the last time she was in our house, before Mom banished her forever.
The house wasn’t nearly as crowded back then—the kitchen still worked, mostly, and both bathrooms were usable. The piles were just starting to accumulate, and most weren’t any taller than my head.
Even though I was only nine when it happened, I’d been able to figure out that the car accident was bad. Mom didn’t come home after work that first night, so Sara had come back to stay with us for a few days, not letting us forget she was doing us a favor. Phil was five years older than me, but Sara was almost ten years older—somewhere between a sister and something else, and she was always looking for an excuse to boss us around. She had already graduated from high school and had moved to San Francisco, so she couldn’t stay with Phil and me for very long without missing work. She left after a few days, and Aunt Jean came to stay with us until Mom got better.