Maya is standing on the front porch, trembling as she grips the brass knob. It’s locked but through instinct she finds the key hidden under the doormat. She feels the familiar ridges and creases of the key against her forefinger and thumb and tightly squeezes it in her palm. With eyes closed she unlocks the door and steps through.
This had been the house she had grown up in. It had been joyful once. Always filled with warmth, and laughter, and the smell of mama’s cooking. Now as she stands there, nearly twenty years later, she finds certain emptiness to it. The air is cold and tasteless. The wallpaper is peeling and the chandelier hanging in the front room has lost its grace and hangs wilted, like the dead flowers sitting on top of mama’s old china piece.
A memory comes through and Maya finds herself lying on the floor with her sister, Frannie’s face neatly tucked under the curve of her shoulder. They are staring up at the chandelier, a gift from mama’s new boyfriend. They are counting the tiny iridescent crystals as they jingle and clink against one another. The door is wide open allowing a small draft to settle inside the house. Mama is outside screaming. Something about a woman but they pay no attention. Mama is always screaming.
Maya steps into the kitchen and travels back inside her head. This time mama is gone and she is sitting at the kitchen table alone. There is a man standing over her, with his bony fingers bound to her shoulder, his nails digging into the crest of her collarbone. She remembers his name. Keiser. Sheriff Keiser. With his other hand, Sheriff Keiser is tugging at the tip of his gray mustache. His badge is hanging around his neck from a silver chain, and droops in front of her face as he bends lower. It reminds her of the silver pocket watch mama’s new boyfriend had giver her the day before she disappeared. She wonders if she still has it on her.

Maya is back in the old house again. Standing in the kitchen, pausing over the manila folder that they have laid out for her on the linoleum countertop. She wonders if the family who will be living her will ever find the carved initials branded into the wooden door under the sink. If they know that her first dog, Maple, is buried out under the flowerbed under the big pinewood in the backyard. If they will ever use the old fishing lines hanging up out back that mama used to dry their clothes with.

She signs the papers. Locks up the house and then just like her memories she is gone.