I stare at the house from the curb, my brain swept away on a flood of memories, some good, some bad. Here, twenty feet away from me, is the oak tree that Mama didn’t want me playing in, but I still did every chance I got since the trunk was split. She said it was because of storm damage when she was pregnant with me, but whatever the reason, thick branches started not that far off the ground, and to a little girl who loved to climb, it looked like a ladder to the sky. I scrambled up that ladder so often I knew every twist, nook, and cranny in the branches. At least, I thought I did until I was eight and slipped and fell. I’m lucky I got away with nothing but a small scar under my chin. In fact, it’s still visible if you know where to look.

I step up onto the same sidewalk that I used to hopscotch down for hours, using chalk that I’d gotten from anywhere I could. I don’t know why I was such a hopscotch nut. All of my friends outgrew the game by third grade, but I’d stay out until the streetlights came on and Mama would holler out at me from the kitchen that it was time to come inside for dinner. There’s nothing drawn on it now, but to me, I can still see the ghostly outlines in pink, yellow, blue, and green and feel the bounce of my ponytail as I hopped along.

I shake my head—that girl hasn’t been around for over a decade—and cross the yard. It needs some maintenance. The sign on the house is dusty, and clearly, the place has been up for sale for a while. Stepping closer, I can start to see why. While the rails on the porch have a relatively fresh coat of paint, the floorboards themselves are listing a little. I remember sometimes, right at the end before Mama and I moved, sneaking out to avoid the sounds coming from her bedroom as she and her latest boyfriend did things I didn’t quite understand at the time. This was during the bad years, after Dad left, and Mama . . . well, she needed men like some people need water.

So I used to sneak out, sometimes to sleep in the treehouse I had in the backyard, sometimes just to walk around and smell the night air. I remember that the board just to the left of the window used to always squeak, no matter how hard we’d nail it down. Now, though, there’s no way I’d trust myself to the porch. Half of the boards look dry rotted, and the whole thing is listing slightly to the back. Knowing my luck, if I take one step on that thing, I’d fall right through and end up with a splinter the size of a ballpoint pen in my ass.

I walk around the side, down the dirt driveway to the parking area in the back, what people in this area call a ‘dooryard’. The garage is gone, just a concrete slab now, but other than that, little’s changed. I can almost see Mama standing in the sagging screen door, calling my name. My eyes start to prickle with tears. I can almost feel a whisper of her there, but she’s not. She’s been gone for a couple of years now. While Dad and I are on polite terms, his life’s not around here anymore. He probably hasn’t been back here in twenty years.

But this . . . this is where I see Mama. It’s in the buzz of the cicadas, the humidity, and the sunsets where the air hangs thick like sap around you. A place where your skin glistens five minutes after you dry off from the warmth, and every meal is accompanied by a glass of iced tea or lemonade just to get that cool kiss before diving into something spicy and most likely fried.

I check the back door. It’s locked, of course, but the windows are just high enough that I can look around. The kitchen looks a mess, but the trained evaluator in me sees that it’s surface mess.

Going around, I see the same thing repeated time after time. Most of the damage in the house is superficial, although there’s some that’s due to age. When I get to the corner room, where my old bedroom used to be, I know. This is my next project, the first one from find to finish, all mine.

I’ll talk it over with Oliver, of course, mainly because I’ll need the time to do all of this, but that’s okay. I’m going to make this house all the things I wanted as a little girl. There were so many things that Mama said she’d fix but never did. The reason we could never fix anything was the same. “We don’t have the money right now, honey,” Mama would say, and while it was true, she spent more than enough money chasing after her boyfriends, usually on clothes to attract them or some other man.

But this house . . . I know what I need to do. Going around front, I take a few pictures of the property, then make sure I get the number on the For Sale sign down before I get in my car. I start up my engine and give 614 Douglas another look before pulling away. I’ve got one more house to look at for Oliver, and then I need to get home.

I’ve got research to do, and shopping for shoes online can wait.