Page 6 of She Haunts Me Still

But maybe it was just dormant, waiting to be woken back up. That smell in the theater had stirred something loose inside her, excavating the fear she’d felt as a child hiding beneath blankets while that woman lurked in the shadows.

“That’s a pretty deep laceration,” the nurse says, reaching for a box of gauze. “You sure that’s how you got it?”

Mallory doesn’t hesitate. “Yep. Clumsy me.”

The nurse makes ahmmsound but doesn’t push further, and Mallory relaxes with a small sigh of relief.

“Alright. I’m going to write you a prescription for mupirocin to ward off infection. You can pick it up at Shoreview Pharmacy. You know where that is?”

“Yeah.” Mallory nods again. “I grew up here. In Shoreview, I mean.”

“Really?” The creases in the nurse’s face deepen as she winds the gauze around Mallory’s hand. “Young folks around here usually can’t wait to move away.”

Mallory forces a smile. Maybe she should start saying she’s from Boston, like Arden. It would be easier than admitting she’s a legacy student, which will lead to questions about a family she’d never met.

Most people wouldn’t understand why Mallory wanted to attend the same school as her mother. Even Aunt Penelope tried to dissuade her from going to Shore.You deserve to design your own future,she’d said.No use stirring up history that will only cause you pain.

Mallory had wanted to laugh, because lingering questions hurt more than the past ever could. But she also wasn’t sure how to confess the real reason she’d wanted to enroll. During winter break last year, she’d dug through Penelope’s closet in search of some shoes when she noticed a bin of her mother’s old clothes. At the bottom had been a notebook—with the Shore College insignia on the front.

It was mostly full of lecture notes, and Mallory had nearly cast it aside, until she saw the way her mother’s penmanship had devolved as she flipped through the pages. The way it started out neat in autumn, but by spring was barely legible.As though her mother’s hands had refused to communicate with her brain.

Like something else had taken over instead.

The sight reminded Mallory of her mother’s notepad in the blue house. Pages that were full of grocery lists on one side, and nonsensical things that didn’t even look like words on the other. Mallory asked about it once, and her mother responded by throwing the entire pad in the trash.

When Mallory reached the last page of her mother’s Shore notebook, she’d frozen. There, her mother had drawn a series of squares, like a code.

Mallory couldn’t explain it, but it was like her mother was whispering to her with those scratchy pen marks.Come find me,she seemed to call.You deserve to know where this all began.

But it wasn’t like Mallory could say any of this to Aunt Penelope. They argued about college for months, until Shore’s admissions department reached out, offering Mallory a scholarship. A recruiter had seen her boarding school’s senior production ofThe Crucible,writing that their theater department would be lucky to receive her talent.

It felt like fate, like the universe had handed her a map. Penelope relented soon after, sending Mallory off to Shore with a cell phone so she could check in over text whenever she wanted.

“Before you go,” the nurse continues, reclaiming Mallory’s attention, “I want to verify some information on your char—” She frowns at the folder. “Webb, right?”

“Yes.”

“Jasmine?”

Mallory’s chest clenches. “No. That’s my mother. I’m Mallory.”

“Ahh. That would explain it.” The nurse waves the file. “Didn’t think you were born over forty years ago. If you were, I’d be asking about your night cream. Your mother is a Shore alum?”

“Was,” Mallory corrects, and the past tense doesn’t even sting as understanding sinks in.

Her mother’s medical records arehere,in this building.

They’ve been here this whole time.

“Oh, you poor thing. I’m sorry for your loss.” The nurse’s sneakers squeak as she patters toward the door. “I’ll return this to the office and grab your chart. One moment, please.”

Alone in the exam room, Mallory peers through the arched window at the tree-lined walkway below, the protruding cupola of the library in the distance.I’m sorry for your loss. Everyone always says that. Like her mother is an object she misplaced, rather than the person who once lit up her world.

Mallory traces the brass butterfly in the center of her locket, thinking of the small handful of photographs she has of her mother. She tries to imagine her here, at Shore. Seated in the courtyard, brown hair braided down her back. Bundled in a coat, hurrying down the winding path in an evening snowfall. Curled up in one of the oversized leather chairs at the library—

Before she can stop them, other images wedge their way in. The ones that circle Mallory’s memory like a fly buzzing over rotting meat.

That cold December morning in the blue house. The stale, unforgiving light that swelled through the gauzy curtains. Her mother’s frozen, unblinking eyes, an unnatural shade of opal.