Chapter 1: The Girl at the Roadside Grave

The year I turned nine, my dad had an affair with the lady next door.

People in our neighborhood whispered about it behind closed curtains—Dad and Miss Janine, always laughing too long over the backyard fence. Even at nine, I could feel the way something in our family snapped, like a screen door banging open in a storm.

When my mom found out, she took a razor and slit both her own wrists and mine.

The memory hits in flashes: cold bathroom tile, the metallic tang of blood, her hands shaking as she held me tight. She was crying so hard her words blurred with her sobs. The bathroom light buzzed above us, and then everything went still.

She cried, saying that maybe only in death would Dad finally wake up.

Her voice still echoes in my head—haunted, desperate. “Maybe if we both go, he’ll finally see what he lost.”

But in the end, only I died.

Somehow, Mom lived. Maybe someone found her in time, or maybe she wanted to stay for him—or herself. I was the one who drifted away, stuck somewhere between the living and the dead.

I lingered in this world for ten years.

Ten birthdays came and went. I watched seasons spin by from my little patch of earth, year after year, like looking through a foggy window.

Dad and the lady next door had a daughter—my little sister.

They named her Lila, and she had Dad’s big blue eyes. She toddled through the grass, clutching stuffed animals, never knowing my name.

Mom started over too and had a son—my little brother.

His name was Jamie. He looked just like Mom, only smaller and brighter, his giggles ringing out as she pushed him on a backyard swing.

They all forgot about me, and I was so hungry.

I didn’t get it at first. I watched them laughing, growing, moving on. Meanwhile, I felt hollow, like I was made of wind and longing.

So I sent them dreams.

I’d slip into their dreams like the smell of Mom’s perfume on laundry day—soft, familiar, impossible to ignore. I’d whisper my name, show them my favorite places—hoping they’d remember, even for a moment.

They promised to leave lots and lots of flowers for me at my grave—a tradition for the dead.

In my dreams, their promises felt warm and real. Marigolds, sunflowers, peonies—my favorites, all piled high in a rainbow mound.

But when I finally went to the place they promised, there were no flowers—just a preacher, whispering prayers into the mist.