She carried them back to the dining room’s French doors.
The front door was padlocked, or so Allie had been told. She hadn’t verified this detail with her own eyes. She assumed that anyone worth their salt—a person whose job is to lock people out of their own houses—would padlock the back door as well. But somehow the French doors to the dining room must have seemed more like windows. They’d been left as Allie had always known them.
She knew exactly which pane of glass she needed to knock out. Then she could reach through and unlock the doors from the inside.
Allie closed her eyes and held the mallet in position, ready to strike. Nothing happened. She felt as though she’d sent a signal to her arm to swing the mallet. Apparently it had not been received. She opened her eyes again and felt around inside that resistance. Just as she was not a person who stole smartphones, she was not a person who broke windows. It felt entirely outside her nature.
But this needed to be done.
She closed her eyes again and pushed harder against the sensation. The arm swung as directed. The sound of glass breaking, falling inward and smashing on the Spanish tiles of the dining room floor, made her jump. It sounded violent. Like some kind of sudden danger. Something Allie had never meant to invite.
She opened her eyes and regarded what she had done.
How long would the house sit empty, one pane of glass broken on these French doors? Would it rain in? Would leaves blow into the dining room?
More importantly, was there a compelling reason why she still cared?
She wrapped the towel around her arm to prevent cuts, then reached in and unlocked the door from the inside.
Allie stepped into the only home she had ever known. The place she had never imagined herself leaving until . . . how many days ago? She couldn’t remember. She couldn’t imagine. Seven? Ten? Twelve? And how was that possible? The whole world had changed since then. She was a different person and her life was a different life. How could it not have been at least months? Maybe more like years?
The memories the house reawakened seemed faded and ancient and dulled by absence.
The house itself felt different.
Allie set the towel and mallet on the tiles. She wandered through the dining room and along the hall toward the stairs, feeling the ways in which the house had changed. Like a person you always thought you could trust. But then, when you found out they lied to you, purposely and with malice, you had to go back and reframe everything you thought you knew about them. You had to rewrite an entire history.
Allie padded up the stairs, sensing something about houses that she hadn’t known before: They are not entirely inanimate. They can be alive or dead. When they are alive, gas runs through pipelines to create heat. Water flows from faucets. Electricity creates light. Was this house alive or dead? Had someone turned off all its living functions before padlocking the doors? Or were the utility bills stacking up, shutoff warnings filling the mailbox to overflowing? Or . . . wait. Had enough time even gone by for the utility companies to notice a change?
She pushed the maze of thoughts out of her head again. She was a kid. It hit her fairly suddenly. She liked to think of herself as mostly grown. But as a fifteen-year-old, it was not her job to keep a house alive. It was not something she had ever learned, nor should have felt compelled to learn at her age. It was her parents’ job. A job at which they had failed miserably.
It was okay for Allie to flounder in the details and give up trying to understand.
She swung the door of her room wide.
On a closet shelf she found two overnight bags that she and her mother had bought in South America. Intricately handwoven, functional art. One had been intended for her mother, but somehow Allie had inherited both. Her mother’s South American bag had been one more small belonging above and beyond being needed, or even used.
She pulled them down and began to fill one with clothes.
Even a few days earlier Allie would have bemoaned the fact that these were her least favorite clothes. Her favorites had gone to New Beginnings with her, and were gone forever. She registered this fact, but did not react to it. After a few days of owning only the clothes she was wearing—after simply getting dirtier day after day, with no way to shower and no clean outfit to change into if she had—clothes were clothes, and any were welcome.
All of her life standards had transformed.
She stuffed the second woven bag with her piggy bank, laptop, iPad, Kindle, and phone, along with a coin collection she had inherited from her late grandfather and a one-ounce gold bar that had been a present from her one and only uncle, now deceased. She threw in the jewelry she deemed worth selling: a heavy woven necklace that she thought was real gold, and a diamond engagement ring that had been passed down through her father’s side of the family.
She looked around the room, wondering if that was enough. Then she experienced a wave of dizziness, closed her eyes, and decided not to look around anymore.
Everything she saw in this room was a small component of Allie. Something that defined the person she had always thought herself to be. But it was all irrelevant now. Allie suspected the dizziness had come from this huge, destabilizing realization.
The thing to do was to stop looking around. Stop poking that emotional center to see what waves would emanate.
She needed to walk out again. The faster the better.
Allie stopped at the gate and picked up the rolled and deflated pool raft, which she tucked under her arm.
She charged through the gate, leaving it flapping open behind her. She trotted across the side lawn, weighed down by her sudden riches. She craned her neck to peer up and down the street, hoping to see the familiar white bakery van. The street was empty. Her stomach buzzed with nerves. She felt like a thief, which irritated her sense of the rightness of things. It was the second time that day she’d had to defend the right to her own belongings. This time she was forced to defend it to herself.
Just as she came out from beside the house and into the front yard, she felt the pool raft slip out from under her arm. She reached down to grab it. Then she straightened, bolting forward again at the same time, and ran into her next-door neighbor, Mrs. Deary.
Literally. Ran into her. Almost bowled her down.
“Oh,” she said. “Mrs. Deary. I’m sorry.”
“Alberta? What are you doing here?”