As I stood in the threshold of the house that had seemed like a tomb for five years, the morning air was clear and harsh. The quiet of my routine was broken at precisely six in the morning by the doorbell’s shrill, frantic ring. With my hair half-clipped and a refreshing cup of coffee in my hand, I stood there in my robe, possibly anticipating a lost shipment or an obstinate neighbor. Rather, the world as I knew it vanished when I opened the door. There was a little wicker basket lying on my porch’s chilly flooring. There was a real, breathing baby within, tucked behind layers of cloth.
I told myself I was dreaming for a long, confusing moment. The mind can be cruelly tricked by grief, bringing phantoms out of the shadows. The infant, however, was real. She was small, with rosy cheeks, and looked up at the morning sky with serious interest. My hand burned as the coffee sloshed over the rim of my mug and my breath caught, but I was unaware of it. I was completely preoccupied by the material that was wrapped around the youngster. It was a faded denim jacket with ragged cuffs and a lingering, recognizable smell that struck me like a blow to the body. When Jennifer was fifteen, I had purchased that jacket for her. She had essentially lived in it until the day she disappeared, but I recall her rolling her eyes at the present and grumbling that it wasn’t old enough.
Jennifer was sixteen five years ago. She had great talent and was a tornado of teenage disobedience. When I last saw her, she was furiously banging kitchen cupboards because her father, Paul, had prevented her from seeing Andy, a local kid. Paul was a man who ruled our house with an iron grip and led with pride. He saw Andy as a diversion, a “nobody” who would destroy Jennifer’s prospects. Jennifer vanished following that last altercation. There was complete stillness after that. The neighbors finally stopped inquiring, the police files became dusty, and the posters in the grocery shop windows faded in the sun. Paul used his own guilt as a weapon to make me feel like a bad mother by blaming me for her leaving. Three years ago, he moved out to live with a lady named Amber, leaving me by myself in a home haunted by memories of our past together.