Ghosts in the Hallway
The morning light came in wrong.
Emily lay still for a moment, blinking at the ceiling, trying to place why everything felt tilted. At home—her real home, the one three states away with the crooked porch light and the maple tree that dropped seeds like confetti every autumn—the sun came through her window from the left, warming her feet first. Here it slanted from the right, spilling gold across a ceiling she didn't recognize, catching motes of dust that spiraled lazily above towers of cardboard.
Boxes. Right. She wasn't home. She was in Grandma Ruth's house, except it wasn't Grandma Ruth's anymore, because Grandma Ruth had been gone eight months now, and somehow in the strange arithmetic of inheritance and grief, the house had become theirs.
Emily sat up slowly, the quilt sliding off her shoulders, and surveyed the wreckage of her new bedroom. Boxes labeled in her mother's cramped handwriting sat stacked against every wall—BOOKS, EMILY'S ROOM MISC, DO NOT LOSE—like cardboard sentries guarding a life not yet assembled. She'd unpacked enough last night to find her sheets and a single lamp, but the rest of her existence remained sealed in brown paper and packing tape, waiting.…
