Page 3 of Delilah
I imagine my mom squealing in excitement at that. “I know right? He asked me for a second date. Guess what we’re doing?” I laugh to myself again, but it’s a sad laugh this time. “Bowling. I remember you telling me that’s why Dad fell in love with you. You’ll have to make some time to teach me. Because I want to be in love like you were.”
My voice breaks and I have to rest my hands on my knees to keep from falling over and dry heaving on my grief. “I…I miss you both so much I can’t stand it sometimes. It never gets any easier, you know. My therapist tells me that I’ll hit a point where I’ll learn to live around the pain but…well she’s been telling me that since I was four. I’m starting to think she’s full of shit.”
Chapter 3
It takes me two full hours to clean my parents' headstones. I update them on everything they’ve missed in the year since I last visited. I spend a lot of time asking their opinions on what I should do after I graduate.
I want to do so much good in the world, but nobody believes in me the way that they would. It’s so hard to get people to listen to me when all they think about when they see my name is that I’m the daughter of a serial killer.
Travis once suggested that I change my last name from Reeves back to my birth name, Gilbert, but I would never do that. I am aReeves, and I’ll always be a Reeves. All I want to do is prove to not only the world, but to my parents, that I’m proud of who I am, and the sins of my father will never change that.
After I leave the cemetery, I spend some time wandering around the city, and eventually, my feet carry me to the abandoned Reeves Estate. I clutch my hand around the wrought iron gate and stare at the mansion across the overgrown yard.
People say the property is cursed. So many people who have lived here have met their violent demise. It’s nothing but a slowly deteriorating relic of the worst parts of this city.
I haven’t been back here in seventeen years. Travis never brought me when I was little, and then when we started moving states, I just never thought to see what’s become of my old home.
I look around once before slipping through the small crack in the gate. The chain lock allows just enough space for my body to fit through. I walk down the driveway and feel a sense of dread as I approach the house.
The pristine white brick is now coated in a thick layer of dirt. Moss and weeds climb up the walls. The windows are shattered, some of them boarded. The marble statue outside the front door is broken and the stagnant water in the well has gone black and is probably festering with insect eggs.
If I didn’t know better, I’d say the home from my memories and the one in front of me aren’t the same. This isn’t even a home anymore. It’s a graveyard.
The front door is wide open, and with hesitation, I step through. It’s dark outside and even darker in the house. I pull out my cell phone and turn on the flashlight. I watch a few rats scurry away. My footsteps don’t echo like they used to. The floor is so thick with dirt and grime that my footsteps make a faint padding sound as I walk further into the foyer.
No shocker that most of the living room furniture has been stolen or eaten by rats. The bookshelves are covered in mold and the books on them are decayed. I slowly walk through every room on the first floor, avoiding the kitchen, reliving all the memories I cherish so deeply in my heart.
The Tootsie Roll stashes that my dad would hide around the house for me. The way he’d put me on his shoulders, and we’d chase Mom around the dining room table. The marker streaks are still all over his desk from where he let me go wild in my coloring books while he worked. The pictures I drew for them are still framed in their bedroom.
There’s still a stack of stuffed animals in the corner of my old room as tall as I am, and princess dresses still hanging in the closet, eaten through after years of neglect.
The lavender comforter on my bed is covered in animal urine and droppings, but it’s still unmade in the exact orientation as I left it.
I remember, because that horrible morning, I almost left my bedroom without Mr. Bunny. I came back to grab him before I went to the kitchen. When I left the room, I looked back at my bed. I think my four-year-old heart somehow knew that would be the last time I’d be in that room.
All of my memories from my time here are so vivid. The bad ones, yes, but especially the good ones.
They’re the only proof I have that I was loved.
I wipe my face as a few stray tears fall down my cheeks. My phone starts to feel warm in my hands from the flashlight being on for so long, but I continue my haunting tour of my old home.
One of the first memories I have of this house was from my second day living in it. I wasn’t used to the stairs because we didn’t have them in the orphanage. I slipped down three and landed on my wrist to catch myself before tumbling all the way down.
I started crying, and once my parents determined that my wrist wasn’t broken, they let me eat a popsicle while they took turns kissing away my tears until they turned into giggles.
Two days later there was a fluffy white carpet installed, and I never slipped again.
But I did ‘accidentally’use those stairs as a table to color my next picture, and got red marker all over the carpet.
I remember Mom beingso madand telling me I couldn’t have dessert that night as punishment, but Dad just smiled and winked at me.
That night, he brought a bowl of ice cream to my room after Mom went to bed and read me a bedtime story until we both fell asleep.
The evidence of our betrayal was left on my nightstand, but all Mom did when she caught us the next morning was crawl into bed beside us and cuddled me until my stomach started grumbling for breakfast.
The second floor of the house is in just as sorry of a state as the first floor, only there are more cobwebs up here.
There aren’t many framed photos of the three of us together, but the ones I do find on various bookshelves, I keep in a pile to take with me when I leave. I never got to come back to claim any sentimental belongings. Travis was allowed to come onto the property during the investigation to get me clothes and necessities, but we were never allowed back inside.
