Where I'm from, the internet is still slow and we don't leave our shoes in the basement. My parents had a home built special for our family with a magisterial view of the Front Range they were too busy to ever see. The ranch itself was beautiful, but no prettier than the one down the street or down the road or across the way. I inherited the property 15 years too early, but it’s not like I was ever going to leave—who could possibly believe I had anything important to do out in the world. No, that was all Sue-Ann. The first time I saw my twin since our high-school graduation was the night of my parents' funeral; I left my shoes in the basement to see what would happen. She’d chosen to visit my parents while I was away for a few weeks recently, which was very weird. Not the avoiding me part. The visiting our parents part. She’d never done it as far as I knew, and I knew everything about this god-damn town. I'd asked Sue-Ann at the reception after our parents’ funeral if she was ever told why we don’t leave our shoes in the basement, and she just rolled her eyes like she always has at my questions. "Of course. But we've been old enough to drink for three decades," she said, thrusting a martini into my personal bubble. "Lighten up." Sue-Ann was peeved she didn’t get the ranch, which wasn’t fair. She detested everything about this place, about us, about our parents, and it wasn’t just a dumb teenager thing. She moved away so fast after high school I swore steam rose from the road behind her boyfriend’s truck as they high-tailed it to The Big Apple, which I couldn’t relate to. Big cities made me feel like a gerbil. And now she was mad she had to come back. Or maybe she was mad our parents were murdered. They were well known in the community because, before Sue-Ann and I were fully grown, they spent Saturdays with elementary school kids struggling to read. They went to church. They had busy, important jobs making the community better. I had come up blank every time I tried to draw up a list of suspects between telling Sue-Ann our parents had been killed and the time I had to see her, and alcohol sure wasn’t helping. “Careful now, S’Anny,” I says, pushing the martini back into her space. “Especially if you want me to figure this one out, as is your custom.” “If you were that good,” she says, literally snarling, “you’d already know why we don’t leave shoes in the basement.” We take another turn on the sister-squabble wheel, accomplishing recreating an impressive list of hurtful insults from our childhood, ways to denigrate each other’s dreams and hot-potato accusations of who started a fight at a funeral, including: “You left before we were old enough to drink. At least that made the decision about who would get the house easier for Mom and Dad to make.” “Just because you got rewarded with a house for being too afraid to do anything for real with your life doesn’t mean you made good life choices.” Sue-Ann’s entire face goes pink, her tell that she’s holding back tears. Yeah, I’m the one who needs to lighten up. Before I can retaliate, Sue-Ann’s husband overhears us and interrupts. “You both are acting like you’re still not old enough to drink.” He steps in between us, plucks the martini Sue-Ann had gotten for me as well as the one she was drinking out of her hand and spins on his heels out of the room. “I guess we both need to lighten up,” she shrugs. That’s as close to an apology as I’ll ever get, so I nod and hold my arms out for a hug. We make up in silence like we always have and turn toward the reception area. As I hold her, I feel her shaking—too fast for sobs. She doesn’t drink, at least not the version of her I thought I knew, but maybe that’s what was giving her the shakes. Before we re-enter the gathering, Sue-Ann turns to me and I have another one of those moments where a better twin would know what’s about to be said and say it at the same time. That’s never happened to us, but it doesn’t make me feel better that it’s only half my fault. “Ready?” she says, slipping into an emotional mask so tight and proper I’ll be surprised if a capillary doesn’t burst. Why can’t I remember if this is normal Sue-Ann? She starts walking toward the low hum of polite conversation. I nod after she’s already turned away, watching my chance to ask her if she actually doesn’t know why we don’t leave our shoes in the basement walk away. Tomorrow, I will find out. I clomp down the stairs in clogs my Danish cobbler uncle fashioned for my 21st birthday, pitching forward some on their steep angle. Were it not for the railing Dad installed years ago on a whim, I’d likely have broken my face falling to the concrete floor at the bottom of the wooden stairs. I place them, heels touching, at the bottom of the stairs and pad back up the stairs in the only pair of socks I ever knitted. I pad around my house, wondering if I should feel lucky or claustrophobic that I’ve never lived anywhere else in my 50-plus years. Does this mean stability or stagnation? Why don’t I know the reason behind the rule about shoes in the basement of my own home? What else have I simply accepted without questioning—something people who need to lighten up, I might add, don’t do. And why don’t I want to know who took the lives of my parents? Hopefully it’s just because my holier-than-thou twin expects me to want to know—not just to want to know, but to figure it out, provide yet again, hand her yet one more thing in life. But maybe my not wanting to know was the reason I couldn’t come up with a single person to put on my list of subjects, even though I know it’s always the obvious person hiding in plan sight who’s the criminal. I’ve paid for too much therapy over the years to still have demons to be unearthed. Of course, living now alone in the house I grew up in might stir some up that I’d lived long enough to almost forget. I wash the dishes. I wonder if maybe I shouldn’t want to know why we don’t leave shoes in the basement, if only for consistency’s sake. And really, what difference would it make if I knew? I dry my hands and go back to the basement stairs. As I lift my foot to step down, it occurs to me: if it makes no difference if I don’t know why we don’t leave our shoes in the basement, then it won’t make a difference if I do know. I flick the light back off and head to bed. I awake in the middle of the night to my shoes catching fire. I race downstairs with the fire extinguisher and have my fingers on the pin before I realize that it must have been a dream. There’s no fire. How often is there a real fire? I tell my heart to chill out. How often is there really a real fire. Major heat is predicted for that day, so I take the opportunity of being up early in a no-chance-I’m-falling-back-asleep way to get some weeding in the amazing garden my mom started before her twins were born. I hardly notice that I’m so drenched in sweat I could wring out my shirt and, when I stand, a cramp seizes my calf for nearly a full minute. It’s sore enough for the rest of the day that I have to limp around this property that’s stinging me with its beauty. My parents, for all their hustle and neglect, hit all the levels with this one. At least I’m going slow enough to take in the faint smell of pine and jasmine that I’d never noticed growing up here. All the things I’d loved—the dated wood paneling, the spiral staircase, the operatic view of prairie forever in one direction and the glorious barrage of mountains in the other—had stayed lovely. Somehow, that makes me weep. It’s not nostalgia, because nothing has changed. It’s full-on sadness that nothing has changed and simultaneous gratitude that nothing has changed. Nothing except me. I hope. The next two nights bring no real trouble to my shoes, either, just dreams that scare me like when I was little. Now with a full-blown case of sleep anxiety, I switch the shoes out for another pair and try to bring up a boring book on my computer. I fall asleep waiting for the words to clarify. I wake up the next morning from a dreamless sleep to three voice messages from Sue-Ann. I listen to them as I go check on my shoes. The first is a bunch of static. The second is a bunch more static. My shoes are still there, as far as I can tell exactly as I left them. The third is her calmly asking me to call her back. Too calmly. Of course, in our culture now, a phone call at all means someone died—at least you should call when someone dies—but that’s already happened to us. My heart races as I hit callback. What’s worse than death? How it happens flashes through my mind before Sue-Ann picks up. “You have a copy of the will?” She answers the phone as if we’re in the middle of the conversation. “I’m fine, thanks for asking, and yourself?” I try to sound as fake-cheery as possible. “Or some record of them officially transferring ownership of the house to you?” I can’t read her tone. She’s not mad. Not even annoyed. Confident? On a mission? Is this another family prank like I’m starting to suspect the shoes-in-the-basement thing is? “Are you still in town?” “I’ll take you avoiding my questions as a no, then.” Sue-Ann’s voice, muffled, directs to someone in the room with her. I hear my name but nothing else. “And I’ll take your being concerned only with material possessions rather than how your twin sister is doing after our parents’ mysterious murder as a signal to gear up for an inheritance battle.” “Does anyone not fight it when they get shafted by a sibling after their parents die?” Sue-Ann says and hangs up before I can respond. Just like her to follow the crowd, though I wouldn’t have taken her as a gear in the legal machine, especially when Dad has trusted in it so much for reasons he never felt he had to explain. Maybe that’s what keeps the world tuning I think, kneeling down in the garden near the striped petunias I thought when I was young my grandfather painted. I yank out sticker weeds and splat weeds and salad weeds as young Sue-Ann and I called them, leafing through my memories to see if any of them contained either of our parents ever in the garden. They’d paid a highly trained chef to cook for us my entire childhood and gave her permission to grow whatever ingredients she wanted. I think that was the closest they got to good old dirt. ‘Til now. It would be too obvious a guess that the chef—or any of their other hired help—did it. It’s probably Sue-Ann I thought involuntarily. Daughter kills parents and sues twin for inheritance. Also too obvious. Thirty-five years ago, I would have had a number of friends I could have called to talk through the interaction with my twin. Many of them would have known her, known us, known that our parents only wanted one kid and we were both convinced it was her. But growing up is basically an emptying out of relationships, unless I’m doing it wrong. As I train a bean around a pole, I weigh the options for responding to Sue-Ann’s call. I get distracted by wondering about what the hell in childhood would have prepared us for anything we have to endure as adults. Or maybe I’m just doing it wrong. Do the people who refuse to—or just can’t—fit in just get left out, then? Holding down the fort in the only building they’ve ever tried to call home poking around the dirt and experimenting with shoes since no one will explain the rules? What is the reason I think something’s wrong with this? I spend the whole day in this garden someone else planted. Someone else who knew what they were doing. In order to feed me and my twin the whole time we grew up. I wonder how well she knew us, where she was now, if I could call her. As I boil water for pasta, I rummage through the desk drawer to find the blue address book with my mom’s perfect-for-1930s penmanship. I don’t realize until the Ls that I’ve started reading it like it’s a real book, a story about everyone, instead of looking for a specific name. Maybe that’s because I don’t actually know the name I need. How often does that just exactly describe life? I keep reading. When I get to the Rs, the third name rings a bell—just because it’s such a common name, though? Riley. Was the chef’s name Mary Riley? How old was she? Or maybe Juniper? It’s got to be Juniper. I dial the number my mother had written Lord knows how many decades ago. Juniper answers and I’m right back at the dinner table bickering with Sue-Ann over who gets the first bite of her lemon custard. “It’s like we spoke yesterday instead of three decades ago, lovey!” Juniper squealed, erasing time and pain and the longing to be back when things may not have been safe, but they at least were clear. You knew what was coming next even if you couldn’t see the great wheel of time that grinds all of us away—I stopped myself from getting carried away in the pathetic (especially at age 51) wish to just be a kid again. Judging by more than half the elderly people in my neighborhood, the naivety and neediness would return soon enough. But before I could respond with equal jubilation at reconnecting, she spoke again. “I heard about the horrors that have happened in your family.” She lets me sit there, images of the funeral rushing me until they fizzle out and the movies of everything my twin and I could have been waterfalled toward me. When those run out, flashes of Juniper rubbing some herb poultice or freshly concocted salve on my scraped knee, pressing some lavender pillow gently into my forehead to catch my fever, then the same for Sue-Ann, doing what needed to be done to get us through our childhood unscathed by the busyness and self-focused rejection of our parents. Just like I hadn’t remembered her name until now, I hadn’t remembered that silence is awkward for me with everyone except Juniper. She lets my sobs that sound like car horns fill the silence before she starts humming the song she must have heard my grandmother sing over Sue-Ann and I until Gigi died when we were seven. It’s soft, like a backup choir in a song staring me cracking wide in a way doesn’t feel like it will ever close. “I talked to Sue-Ann this week.” She must hear my swallow because she rushes to ensure it’s not bad. “I don’t think I’ve ever understood your differences or why you couldn’t resolve them, but I’m so glad you’re both ready to.” “Uh,” I drag out, waffling between pretending like I know what she’s talking about, revealing that I don’t, and accusing Sue-Ann of bluffing just to trap me. My delay in deciding makes my choice for me. “Oh, mercy, have I jumped to conclusions? I admit that what I know about you girls is from a lifetime ago, but I still thought I knew you well enough.” “Did Sue-Ann say she was making amends?” I cut her off more harshly than I’d planned. “I’ve never known her to be that direct about anything,” Juniper says, her tone now sounding like she’d jumped back a million miles. “She called to ask me if my twin still did calligraphy. And I thought it was so she could get your name on the title she was going to have framed for you. I was so excited that maybe this was finally a healing turn for you girls.” “Oh,” I stumble, “I didn’t know your sister did calligraphy.” Asinine response, of course, but I had to hope that she wouldn’t see through it since it was the only one I could think of that wouldn’t sound totally suspicious or give away my apparently unmerited suspicion right away while I thought about possible alternatives to my conclusion that Sue-Ann was lawyering up. “I didn’t know Sue-Ann did know!” Juniper says. “Must be one of those random things kids pick up from adults talking around them that may or may not mean anything for decades, if ever.” Like ‘we don’t leave our shoes in the basement’? “Sounds like a solid definition of childhood.” I force a laugh. Sue-Ann did not sound at all like she wanted to reconcile when she lasered in on paperwork and had no room for any other discussion. Is resentful resolution a thing? Maybe this was how people in the big city made up. Juniper’s laugh keeps me pinned in the past. “From what I can remember of mine, sure does! Although, good riddance, right?” “Heh,” I say weakly. “Anyway,” we both say. “Go ahead,” we both say. “No, af—” we both start to say before I realize this is my chance to stay shut up and let Juniper talk. “Ha, well, so, yes, my sister still calligraphs upon special request, and I can’t think of anything more special than my twinsies finally getting along!” “Yeah,” I say, confused enough I’m sure I gave myself away. “Anyway, I just sort of jumped in here when you’re the one who called me! Not that I’m not delighted to talk to you.” “Right,” I say slowly. “Right.” “I mean, it’s totally okay if you didn’t have a specific reason. I think people think they have to have this big reason to reach out to someone if it’s been a long time since they’ve talked or whatever, but, look, people. We’ve got an isolation crisis on our hands here. What we need is less pressure to initiate connection, not more. So I’m cool if you just wanted to talk, too. I mean, Sue-Ann just called about a random calligraphy question.” I laugh for as long as it’s not awkward. And then a little more. “Uh, yeah. I was actually just wondering if you knew why we don’t leave our shoes in the basement?” As soon as that comes out of my mouth, it occurs to me that Sue-Ann’s calligraphy question may have been a cover-up for her real reason for calling, too. Somehow, this makes me feel both better and worse. Better because it just really didn’t seem likely that I would have so badly misread her earlier phone call—we are twins, after all. Maybe that’s why we both randomly thought to call Juniper for advice. Is this the first twinsy thing we’ve ever done? Worse because we’re back to Sue-Ann starting up an inheritance battle. It’s not like our parents died peacefully surrounded by family and friends. Far as I know, anyway. “Because of the scorpions, of course! But that only applied when the basement wasn’t finished.” Juniper says, her laughter starting up again. Dad finished the basement when Sue-Ann and I were teenagers. “Ah,” I say. “You girls certainly were always a bit odd,” Juniper says, still chuckling. “All you want to know is about handwriting and shoes.” I can almost hear her shrug. “Not that it bothers me. I’m just happy you’re finally getting along.” Her last sentence echoes as it morphs into my mother’s voice and whined why can’t you just get along. The playground when the squeak of the chains on the swing drilled into my ears and I refused to take turns pushing Sue-Ann. The first family vacation, packed with so much newness I got dizzy enough to throw up on the fresh hotel sheets while Sue-Ann sat perfectly clean and well-behaved ready to hit the lines for the roller coasters. A fight over a toy that would leave both of us in tears. Round and round these scenes go—why couldn’t we just get along? “Yeah, it sure is nice,” I say, realizing I’ve been wandering around the house, pausing in several of the places where Sue-Ann and/or I cried and pointed the finger in anger at each other. As I wrap up the conversation with Juniper, I also realize I’ve never been in my parents’ room. I march up the stairs and grab the door handle, but then I freeze. My face flushes with embarrassment that this is such a big deal, that I still hesitate to enter what is now just a room. A room in my house. That my dead parents surely left to me. I just have to find the paperwork. When I finally get in there, I initially see nothing out of the ordinary. No mountains of candy to be kept from children. No ponies or castles or princess dresses. Just all my parents’ old things that I’ll need to go through. Lots of shampoo bottles in the shower, many of them empty? Weird quirk, Mom. Four curling irons all the same size. A stack of washcloths folded into triangles on my Dad’s side. Two matching pairs of beige slippers, still fluffy around the ankles. Each with something shiny and smashed in one of the feet. I grab the nearest thing to me—letter opener—and poke at the crunchy mess. An Arizona bark Scorpion in each. One of the only ones in the region with a fatal sting. But the basement was finished 35 years ago. My heart starts rushing before I get up. I’m down both flights of stairs and in the basement with all the lights on before I consciously send my legs the message to run. My shoes are empty, just as they have been for two weeks. Everything looks finished. I check behind the doors to the bedrooms. Finished. The storage space. Finished. The crawl space isn’t supposed to be finished but the covering is crooked. I push it away and pull the string to turn on the light. The weak beam from the bulb that has to be decades old glints off dozens of canning jars. I reach around the corner, a jolt of little-kid terror stinging my whole body, to grab the emergency flashlight. Most of the jars are empty. Some have been there so long they’ve collected enough dust to resemble sand. Only a few—but more than one—have long-dead scorpions intentionally trapped in them. How long did things go on like this? I steady myself against the unsanded wood framing the entrance to the crawl space. How long will they? I heave at the next thought: as long as you let them. I need a lawyer, but not because of the house: Sue-Ann can have this ghost-strewn chamber—if she doesn’t get locked up for insurance fraud, attempt to frame an innocent, pre-meditated murder, good Lord in heaven knows what else. I don’t know where I’ll go, but it’s about time I do.
Megan Wildhood is a writer, editor and writing coach who helps her readers feel seen in her monthly newsletter, poetry chapbook Long Division (Finishing Line Press, 2017), her full-length poetry collection Bowed As If Laden With Snow (Cornerstone Press, May 2023) as well as Mad in America, The Sun and elsewhere. You can learn more about her writing, working with her and her mental-health and research newsletter at meganwildhood.com.