The Good Daughter by Alexandra Burt

Author:Alexandra Burt [Alexandra Burt]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9780451488114
Publisher: Berkley
Published: 2017-02-07T05:00:00+00:00

Twenty-one

MEMPHIS

MEMPHIS sucks smoke deep into her lungs, trapping it. She craves the nicotine and continues to hold in the smoke as Dahlia reaches the end of the driveway. There are many memories she tries not to hold on to yet she can’t help when they arrive and wills them to depart just as quickly.

The dog makes it harder and harder for her to ignore certain things she’d rather forget. Memphis likes the dog even though it’s difficult to look at her with her engorged nipples drooping toward the ground, and Memphis wonders how many litters she’s given birth to.

How unfair life is, she thinks; everything rises and falls with the womb you emerge from. If Tallulah had had a proper home, she would’ve been spayed and well fed and sleeping on a couch at night, but she is nothing but a stray with a worn-out body, covered in hairless spots from ticks and bites and sharp fences. Memphis imagines other dogs nipping at her when she tried to get away from them or avoiding sticks swung by callous hands while searching for a safe place to rest. Memphis shudders and her heart aches for the dog. She has always had a soft spot for animals, more so than for humans.

After the dust on the driveway settles, Memphis walks toward the shed. She tells herself that she can do this. She’s thankful for the meds, grateful for the escape the little orange bottles allow, appreciative for the log-like sleep at night, twelve hours at a time.

The windows of the shed are nailed shut but partially visible, the panes are cloudy and distorted but it’s all the same to her, and there’s no need to look through them anyhow. She can name every single item in that shed. The door is still temperamental but she remembers it well and knows just how to coax it open. So are the rules with old and stubborn things; one must know just where and how to push and secrets come rambling out like dice from a cup.

Memphis enters the shed and in a flash she stands in the midst of a vast darkness. There are remnants of sulfur in the air. It’s been decades, yet the pungent vapor fills her nostrils, turns her stomach. She looks down at her hands and then her feet, but she can’t see a thing. Her eyes can’t penetrate the darkness no matter which way she turns; it is brooding and rotating around her and the hairs on the back of her neck stand up. She can almost hear muffled voices bouncing off the walls. There’s a ripple of mocking laughter, becoming louder, and it presses in on her.

And so she waits until the ghosts of the past join her and complete the memory of the first time Quinn set foot in the shed.

“What are you working on and what’s that paint on your fingers? I washed your clothes and they are splattered with that white stuff. They’re ruined. Are you painting something?” Quinn had said.

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