The crying sounded like a ghost of the baby I once rocked, thin and frayed, the kind of sound you feel in your teeth before your ears. I followed it past the idle mower and the simmering soup, past the framed school photos of a girl who had grown up and flown away to Phoenix—or so I had believed. The basement door, usually swollen shut with disuse, yawned open a few inches, breathing out a draft that smelled of bleach and dust and something else: fear, old and patient. The crying hitched, then softened, as if it knew I was there, as if it had been calling only for me all alon… Continues…
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