The fluorescent lights of the hospital corridor were still burning behind my eyelids as I fumbled with my keys on the front step. It was 11:03 a.m., and my body was operating on autopilot after sixteen hours straight on the ICU floor. My feet throbbed in my work shoes, my scrubs smelled like antiseptic and coffee, and every muscle in my back was staging a quiet rebellion.
But none of that mattered because in a few hours, I’d get to see Kora. That thought had carried me through the last hour of my shift—the promise of two hours of sleep, then the whole afternoon with my seven-year-old daughter. Maybe we’d bake something.
Maybe we’d just curl up on the couch and watch her favorite show. It didn’t matter what we did. What mattered was being together.
I pushed the door open and immediately felt something shift in my chest. The house smelled like fresh coffee and maple syrup, and I could hear voices—bright, busy voices—coming from somewhere deep inside. My mother’s laugh rang out, the particular one she uses when she’s trying to charm someone into something.
Then I heard movement in the hallway. My sister Allison emerged from around the corner carrying flattened cardboard boxes, her socks sliding slightly on the hardwood floor. A ring light box was propped against the wall, already opened.
When she saw me, she smiled without showing her teeth. “Oh, you’re home,” she said, like I was interrupting something. I didn’t smile back.
I didn’t ask why there were boxes. I walked straight past her toward Kora’s room because something primitive and maternal in me was already screaming that something was wrong. I pushed the door open and my shoulder hit the frame as I stopped dead.
The room looked like it had been hit by a polite hurricane. Kora’s bed was stripped down to the bare mattress, the fitted sheet pulled away and tossed aside. Her blanket—the soft blue one she’d slept with since she was three—was folded and shoved into a laundry basket like it was garbage.
Her stuffed bunny sat upright on the dresser, turned to face the wall like it was being punished. The rug was rolled halfway up, and the walls were bare in patches where her crayon drawings and little posters used to hang. There was painter’s tape stuck to the baseboards.
A measuring tape stretched across the floor. On the desk sat a stack of printed photos—inspiration boards, all beige and white and aggressively adult. This wasn’t cleaning.
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