I step out of the car, the autumn air swirling around my hair and up my dress, which I clutch at and push down. Before I can free a hand to smooth my hair, the door swings open and Erik waves at us, eyes taking me in encouragingly. His hair is blonder than I remember with the sun spotlighting it. His lips curl into a smile watching me holding my hem down, while I shake auburn hair out of my face and lip gloss, where strands stick like flies in ointment.
Erik is at the curb in seconds and hugs Kayla before turning to me, where he gathers my face in my hands, dutifully brushing the sticky hairs off my lips.
“You’re even more beautiful in the light of day,” he tells me, eyes straying from mine to take the rest of me in.
“Can you imagine if you saw me after all these years and I looked like a trash bag with eyes?” I laugh nervously. “Full on Coyote Ugly.”
“I gave up beer goggles years ago, so there was no chance of that,” he chuckles, motioning to the entrance. “Ready to go in?”
“No,” I say before I can stop myself. “Sorry, I didn’t mean that. Well, I did, but I don’t plan to actually not go inside. My god, I am babbling,”
“It’ll be fine,” he tells me earnestly, a smile touching his kind eyes as he gently leads me to the hulking double door.
We cross the threshold into the grand foyer, and I see the ornate, curved staircase that I bounded up so many times as a youth. I can almost hear them creaking as I look at them. The house still has that wooden, sweet odor only shared by other old houses. A smell of the past, for good or bad. I inhale and try to remember all the good memories instead of the one bad one.
Before I can collect myself, I feel a presence and look to my left to see Juniper standing there, holding onto the side of the thick archway at the entrance of the sitting room.
Her body is waiflike, fragile looking against the sturdy architecture. Her hair is just as I remember, champagne silk laying against her slender cheeks, the apples of which are rosy, though untouched by makeup. Her milky, pale blue eyes stare out blankly and it’s only when I venture closer that I notice the faint, weblike scars framing them. They are so scant that it would take knowledge and keen observation to even see them.
“Kat,” she breathes, her voice lilting charmingly as it always had. She reaches out and I step forward and gather her in a hug before she has to feel around to find me.
“It’s so good to have you here,” she cries out as she buries her face into my shoulder, clutching me warmly.
“Oh Juni,” I choke out, feeling the sting of hot tears on my face. “Kayla is here too.”
In a flash, Kayla has gathered us into a group hug which is devoid of embarrassment, despite the weeping and snorting that punctuates the silence.
I finally pull away and hold Juniper at arms length. “I am so happy to see you.” I immediately feel bad about the phrasing, but Juniper doesn’t seem to notice or care as she encourages us into the sitting room, using her cane to click along the familiar path.
The sitting room is still arranged the same way, though there are new couches, a vibrant blue, versus the plain tan ones of yesteryear. I settle into one, staring at Juniper who has felt her way to a patterned sitting chair that she lowers herself into slowly. Kayla sits across from me as Erik comes into the room with coffee and some cookies on an ornate silver tray I recognize from years before.
Erik begins the ritual of smalltalk, and I’m grateful for it, but it feels not up to the task of easing us, like a blanket that’s too thin on a frigid night.
“Kayla, can you tell us exactly what you do at the magazine?” Erik asks politely, voice cheerier than his nervous eyes would have us believe.
“It was real,” Juniper interjects, voice flat as her aimless eyes and her head trained forward.
We all turn to stare at her, all knowing immediately what she’s referencing and Kayla and I meet eyes, surprise bouncing between us. The bluntness of it rattles me, as I’ve mostly spent a good amount of energy dancing around this subject rather than embracing it.
“Juni, not this again,” Erik says wearily, scrubbing his chin with his calloused hand as he looks at us apologetically. “They just got here.”
“It will be this forever if I don’t speak up,” she states simply. “I cannot change it.
You’ve avoided it long enough.”
“It was the drugs, Juni,” I say gently, my voice catching a bit as her head swivels to where I’m sitting. “Nothing more.”
“You saw it too, Kat,” she says, voice patient but coaxing. “You saw her.”
“I was hallucinating,” I tell her, shifting uncomfortably against the overly stuffed loveseat, the rough fabric chafing the tender flesh at the back of my knees.
“How could we hallucinate the same thing?” Juniper asks pointedly, ignoring Erik’s objections. Though they are sightless, her eyes feel as though they are still boring into me, forcing me to reconcile with what I’ve always feared.
“We were never able to compare notes,” I argue. “For all you know I saw the cookie monster or a giant, chartreuse blobfish.”
“But you didn’t, Kat,” Juniper says, her back straight with her hands folded demurely in her lap. “You saw her form in the mirror, all black hair and angry eyes and then you saw her lean out of the mirror.”
Kayla snaps her head over to observe me, but I’m reeling and at a loss for words, so Juniper continues, voice hollow and factual. “I did it to myself, but it was her bidding. She punished me.”
“For what?” Kayla whispers as Erik buries his head into his hands, supported on
