I can’t sleep.

It’s much quieter here than it was when I was living back in Queens. The block that we lived on had a lot of traffic at night, and at least once a week I could be guaranteed to be woken up by a car horn, or worse, an alarm that wouldn’t stop sounding off for the better part of an hour. But on this quiet block in our small town, the only thing you can hear at night is a few crickets chirping.

So I don’t know why I’ve slept so terribly since I’ve moved out here.

Part of it might be how strange it is sleeping in my parents’ bedroom. I was reluctant to take the master bedroom at first, for this very reason. But it was the largest of the three upstairs bedrooms by far, and the only one with a queen-sized bed. So I tried to redecorate it to make it my own. I took down the seaside painting my parents always kept over their bed, swapped out the bedspread for my own royal blue down comforter, and replaced nearly all the framed photographs on the dresser.

It doesn’t help. It’s still very much my parents’ bedroom. It even still smells like them. The scent of my mother’s perfume still lingers in the air, no matter how much I scrub the floors and the furniture.

I wish things hadn’t gone the way they did over the last decade. It’s not like I was ever close with my parents. My mother was strict, and my father was always traveling for work. And if the rumors were to be believed, he cheated on my mom a good amount. But still, I didn’t expect the treatment they gave me when I decided to keep the baby growing inside of me.

You’re making a horrible mistake, Brooke, my mother would tell me practically every time we talked.

I wanted to stand up to them, but I was barely clinging to my sanity as it was. All I knew was that I wanted the baby. And I would do anything for my unborn child, including agreeing to live with a relative in the city, and I accepted their monthly checks to make ends meet and get an education. I didn’t want to do it, but I also didn’t want my son to suffer because of my own pride.

visit.

I even accepted that I wasn’t allowed to return to Raker. Not even for a

But when I finished nursing school, and I finally had a decent

paycheck that would allow me to support myself without my parents’ help, I stood up to them. I told them I wasn’t going to take any more of their money. And I wanted the right to come back to Raker to visit them with Josh, or else we would have no relationship at all. I was tired of being their dirty little secret.

I really thought they would acquiesce. I was their only child, and Josh was their only grandchild. I believed their love for us had to be larger than their shame at having a daughter who got knocked up in high school.

I was wrong.

A few months after I started returning their checks, my father drove out to Queens to surprise me as I was returning home from work. I’ve always thought of my father as being handsome compared with my friends’ fathers—women used to turn to look at him on the street—but for the first time, I noticed how old he looked. He had bags under his eyes and a paunch straining the buttons on his shirt. His hair had always looked silver, but now it just looked dull gray.

Don’t do this, Brooke, he pleaded with me. Your mother and I love you.

You know that.

I had snorted. If you loved me, you wouldn’t be ashamed of me.

We’re not ashamed of you. We just don’t think it’s a good idea for you to come to Raker.

But why?

The crease that was always between my father’s eyebrows these days grew deeper. Can’t you just trust us for once, Brooke? We’re doing this for your own good.

I was utterly unsurprised that my father would not give me a logical reason why I couldn’t ever visit my childhood home with my son. So I turned him away, and I continued returning their checks, uncashed. After a year, they got the idea and the checks stopped arriving.

Now here I am, a few short months after their deaths, back in my hometown. Despite how terribly things went wrong, I had a happy childhood until that night. This is the kind of town where you want your child to grow up.

But I can’t help feeling like this bedroom is haunted by their presence.

Or really, the entire house.

I climb out of bed and walk over to the dresser across the room. When I arrived here after I got news of the car accident, I found this dresser littered with photographs of me and Josh. The photographs stopped after I cut them off five years ago, but there were dozens of pictures all over the house, spanning my life from when I was first born to that day I sent my father away because they couldn’t accept my life choices. I took most of them down, but I left a couple. For example, a photograph on the dresser from when I was about Josh’s age, posing with my parents for a Christmas card.

I pick up the photograph now, staring down at my smiling, unlined face. My parents each have one hand on my shoulder, and they are glowing with pride in our little family. I can’t even remember them ever looking that way.

Despite everything, I believe my parents loved me. I can see it in their eyes in this photograph. But their stupid pride got in the way of our relationship. They chose to sever our ties completely rather than be humiliated by having me parade around in front of their friends with my fatherless son.

Except now when I look down at this photograph, I think back to that day my father came out to see me in Queens. He drove for at least five straight hours to get to me because it was that important to him. For the first time, I wonder if his motivation wasn’t completely selfish.

Can’t you just trust us for once, Brooke? We’re doing this for your own good.

He almost seemed… Afraid.

But that’s silly. There was nothing to be afraid of. Shane was behind bars at that point, for the rest of his life. There was no way he could get to me. I was safe from that man.

And I still am.