Page 318 of The Sinner: James

“Are you going to see your parents’ house? It’s on our way,” he says in a different voice.

My smile fades.

“I guess.”

His grin withers away as he notices my reaction.

We take a side road that leads us to what once was my childhood home.

A couple of cars are parked in the front. A young couple and the real estate agent walk out the door.

James pulls the car to a stop and turns the engine off.

I stall for a few moments as the real estate agent waves the couple goodbye and nods a greeting in our direction.

I’m suddenly tense, and my stomach is tied in knots. The memories come back to me, wrapped in sadness.

“You know what? There’s no point in seeing it. I don’t think I can live here, anyway.”

He gives me a sidelong glance.

“Okay,” he murmurs, shifting the key in the ignition.

“Wait,” I say, clutching his arm. “Perhaps I should check to see if anything has changed.”

He turns off the engine as I slide out of the car. I run a nervous hand over my dress while ambling to the entrance.

He stays behind.

Something hurts in my chest when I push the main door open.

It’s only been two years, yet it feels like it was a different life, and now I walk into a dead person’s home.

The place has been renovated and redecorated.

The colors––calming shades of buttercream and caramel seasoned with fiery tangerine––are warm and complement the dark espresso floors.

They give the house a modern feel.

My mom’s pastels and cottage-chic fabrics are long gone.

And yet... As I walk through the rooms, the past comes back to me, a big dark shadow sliding over everything, and all I see are the bits and pieces of my old life.

The corner of the room and the armchair where my father used to sit. The small table by the window where my mother had her coffee in the afternoons.

I walk into my room, and it seems so much smaller now.

Breathlessly, I take everything in. The walls, the ceiling, and the windows. The spot where my bed used to lean against the wall.

It’s hard to believe this is the same space where I opened my eyes for the first time to a vibrant new world in which, naively, I only saw the good.

Here I thought about the future.

Here I talked to Eve for hours and wrote something in my diary for the very first time.

It wasn’t much at the time, a random thought, perhaps, about nothing, which later became the beginning of something else.

Here I shed tears when I fell in love for the very first time… with the man waiting for me outside.

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