The house smelled like betrayal. The lock turned, the door swung, and the first thing that hit me wasn’t salt or sunshine or anything like the summers I’d carried in my chest for years. It was sour—old beer, stale cigarettes—and under that, a sweet, rotting note that made my stomach turn.
Behind me, Daniel and Rosie stopped on the porch. They’d spent the whole drive asking about sandcastles and bunk beds. I’d promised them this trip for months—our reset, our reward, our little beginning.
Instead, I stepped into a wreck. My grandmother’s beach house had never been grand. Two bedrooms.
A porch that sighed in high winds. A kitchen only wide enough to sidestep past the stove. But it was mine, left to me by the woman who used to hum in the doorway at dusk and let the ocean air do the rest.
I had built a dream out of that memory. Light through lace curtains. The radio that crackled with music and weather reports.
The slow rhythm of Gran’s rocking chair at night. What I found was sticky carpet that squelched under my shoes. The coffee table she’d rested her tea on lay cracked in a corner like someone had stomped it for sport.
Empty bottles stood like trophies on the counter. Pizza boxes collapsed in greasy heaps. Cigarette butts were ground into the rug.
Gran’s rocking chair had given up—tipped on its side, one leg split clean through. Rosie’s hand slipped into mine, hot and damp. “Mommy?
What happened here?”
I swallowed hard. Childhood shouldn’t come with those questions. “I don’t know, baby,” I said.
What happened next changed everything… FULL STORY on the next page.
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