Ivey Pierce is an explorer, and thanks to her career as a wildlife biologist, she does not stay stationary for long. But when her parents die in a terrible accident, and her childhood home is left vacant for two years, she returns to the tattered me...
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WHEN I WAS ELEVEN, my parents left me home alone for the first time.
The anxiety of them leaving hit first. It was heavy. They held me while I cried and almost did not go on their research trip. But then the exhilaration of having control hit—back when wanting responsibility was appealing, unlike now.
Even though my parents left dinner in the fridge, I remember digging in the pantry for treats. I ate all the Milano cookies on the dock while flipping through my book about trees. Mr. Morris waved to me as he fed the birds, and I waved back.
"Where are your parents, young lady?" He would ask.
"In the house," I would lie. He tried pressing further, but I never budged. I was sure Mr. Morris knew they were gone, even though it was never more than two days.
That night, after the sun went down and I was settled in bed, I locked myself in my room. The house creaked more than usual, and the pipes in the walls groaned from the summer heat. My eyes closed a total of two times, and I slept with my bedroom lights on, convinced our house was haunted.
As I got older, my parents waited until I was in high school to leave for long periods. That was when my anxiety was at its lowest, my thrill-seeking was at its highest, and I was very good at sneaking out or sneaking people in. Ghosts were not in the forefront of my mind.
But last night, I was eleven again, laying in bed with my eyes wide open.
I could have sworn I heard my parents muffled laughter above me and the sound of the coffee brewing this morning. Though, I think it was grief filling the leftover holes of their death in my heart.
So, I got up early. Instead of starting with a grocery run or my one-hundred paged house-to-do-list, I went outside at dawn and plucked different plants from the yard. The grass was wet with dew, and my feet were sopping wet. The muggy air cocooned my body, and I could barely see over the water horizon.
The man from the dock was gone, and no life graced the blue house today.
Maybe he was the younger ghost of Mr. Morris? Though, the coffee mug and dog bowl left at the edge of the dock told me the burly man was, in fact, real.
After setting my basket of new discoveries in the kitchen, I grabbed my purse and drove into town.
I followed the bends of the road, my mind subconsciously knowing where to go even though I had not lived here for nine years. I would have biked into town, but a load of groceries would not have fit in the tiny basket.
The paved road turned to rocky red brick as the old-fashioned town came into view.
Boats rocked in the harbor beneath the hidden sun, and the sleepy town slowly stirred awake. People walked with their dogs or partner, and others sat with a cup of coffee outside of Oliver's Cafe. I watched small store owners flip their closed signs to open and shifted in my seat.
