Chapter 3: The Scream That Stopped Time
It was a massive, blindingly white party bus with tinted windows, creeping down South 23rd like a predatory leviathan. I stepped out onto my front porch, the wooden boards warm beneath my bare feet.
Through the massive windshield, I could see my father leaning forward, squinting as he read the house numbers. Two rows back, my mother sat clutching a rolled-up vinyl banner, radiating the smug satisfaction of a victorious general.
The bus hissed, its air brakes exhaling as it parked directly in front of my walkway.
My mother stood at the top of the bus stairs. Through the glass doors, I watched her gaze sweep over my property. She saw the painted white porch. She saw the squeaky wicker chair. And then, her eyes locked onto the mailbox, where two massive, ancient rose bushes were in full, defiant summer bloom.
Her hand shot out, clamping onto the metal handrail as if she had been electrocuted. Her face drained of all color, replacing her triumphant smirk with a mask of absolute, unadulterated horror.
And then, she screamed.
It wasn’t a word; it was a guttural, primal sound of structural collapse. Thirty-seven heads snapped toward the windows. The bus driver jerked his hands away from the steering wheel.
It was Dorothy’s house. The house they had stolen and sold fifteen years ago. My mother was staring at the ghost of a porch she had ruthlessly emptied with her own hands.
A collective gasp swept through the bus, a draft of realization blowing down the center aisle. These were the women of Dorothy’s Sunday school class. They recognized the wood trim. They recognized the roses.
My father’s face morphed into a shade of nauseous gray. Kyle, who had been thirteen the last time he stood on this lawn, stood up in the aisle, looking bewildered. Beside him, Brooke, heavily pregnant, protectively covered her swollen belly, sensing the sudden, violent shift in the atmosphere.
“Mom, stay behind me,” Caleb whispered, stepping onto the porch, his shoulders squared.
“You’re fine, bud,” I said gently, stepping in front of him. I hadn’t planned the scream. I had only planned the venue. The terror was all hers.
The bus doors folded open. My mother descended the stairs on sheer muscle memory, her heels clicking against the concrete. She marched up to my gate, her knuckles white. This was the first time we were face-to-face since I hung up the phone.
“Lydia,” she hissed, her voice vibrating with venom. “What did you do?”
“I bought a house, Mom,” I replied, keeping my voice in that calm, clinical register I used when charting a patient’s vitals. “You called me about it on Tuesday.”
My father stepped off the bus, hovering one step behind her—exactly where he had spent his entire marriage. Behind them, thirty-seven elderly women began to disembark in cautious pairs, clustering on the sidewalk like a flock of nervous pigeons.
My mother’s survival instincts kicked in. It took her exactly four seconds to do the mental calculus. She turned to face her congregation, unfurling the banner with a brittle, manic laugh.
“Well, isn’t this something, ladies?” she projected, her voice overly bright. “Lydia’s gone and brought Mother’s house back into the family! We’re home. A Brandt baby coming home to Dorothy’s house. You couldn’t ask for a better blessing!”
My father, taking his cue, signaled the driver to pop the luggage bay. He began dragging out folding tables and a massive cooler. Hidden behind the paper plates were three heavy suitcases and a boxed Pack ‘n Play. Nobody packs a crib for an afternoon shower.
My mother lowered her voice, leaning toward a cluster of women. “Lydia’s had a hard road, you know. The night shifts. She’s… not quite herself. We’ll just set up in the yard. She’ll come around.”
The women didn’t move. Miss Alma, a frail woman leaning heavily on a wooden cane, stepped forward. She had sat in my grandmother’s parlor every Tuesday for three decades. She fixed her rheumy eyes on my mother.
“Did she invite us, Sharon?” Miss Alma asked, her voice trembling but sharp.
“You don’t invite family,” my mother scoffed, reaching over the wooden fence to lift my gate latch.
My hand slammed down over the metal latch, pinning it shut. I didn’t grip it aggressively; I rested my palm over it with the firm, immovable weight of a locked vault.
“Nobody is coming home here but the people who live here,” I said, my voice carrying clearly over the cicadas.
“Lydia, don’t be dramatic,” my mother snapped. “There is a baby coming.”
“I know. I’m a nurse.” I looked past her, locking eyes with my brother on the bottom step of the bus, and then at his terrified fiancée. “The baby will have a home. It just isn’t this one.” I turned my gaze to the sea of women on the sidewalk. “Nobody on this bus was invited. Not by me.”
The silence that followed was suffocating.
My father dropped the cooler onto the pavement with a heavy thud. His chest puffed out, his face flushing crimson as he sought the safety of his favorite, well-worn lie.
“After everything we did for you!” he bellowed, playing to the cheap seats. “We put you with Mother so you’d have a roof! We sold Mother’s house to pay for her care! We bankrupted ourselves to keep this family afloat, and you—!”
“Did you say yes?” Kyle’s voice suddenly cut through the humid air. He had walked up to the fence line, looking at me, his eyes rimmed with exhaustion. “Mom said you offered the house. Did you?”
Before I could answer, Brooke stepped forward, resting a trembling hand on the top of my fence. Her face was pale. She looked at me, bypassing my parents entirely. “I didn’t know,” she whispered. “He said you offered. I would never have agreed.”
“I know,” I said softly. “Nobody asked you, either.”
A flicker of devastating recognition passed between us—two women who had been utilized as pawns by the exact same family.
I slid my hand off the latch and opened the gate. Just a few inches. Enough for one. “It’s ninety degrees out here. Come sit on the porch. Drink some water.”
“You’ll let her in?” my mother shrieked, her facade cracking.
Brooke didn’t look at my mother. She slipped through the gate, climbed my steps, and sank into the wicker chair. She pulled out her phone. I watched her thumbs fly across the screen. I found out later she was texting her mother in Greenwood: Come get me.
My mother’s jaw unhinged. I reached into my scrub pocket, pulled out my phone, and turned the volume to maximum. I hit play on the saved voicemails.
“It’s one night in a motel, Lydia. You’ve lived in one…”
The recording echoed off the surrounding houses. The church women stared at the pavement. They knew the Towson Weekly Rate Inn. Half of them ran food drives there.
“That is a private conversation!” my mother sputtered, her hand flying to her pearls.
I hit play on Thursday’s message. “Kyle says some little place down the block… You should be glad a Brandt baby’s coming home there.”
I pocketed the phone and gripped the fence. “I bought this house in May with fifteen years of night shifts,” I announced to the crowd. “My son learned to sleep to the sound of an ice machine. My children’s last name is Brandt. Two Brandt babies already came home here.”
Miss Alma leaned heavily on her cane, staring at the rose bushes. “Dorothy told us the house was for you,” she whispered, her voice fragile as spun glass. “We all knew it. We just… thought…”
“Mother was confused at the end!” my mother shouted desperately.
“We sold the house for her care!” my father roared, pointing a furious finger at the sky. “Hospice! Medications! It took everything!”
I stared at him, my expression dead and flat. “She died at home. In her own bed. In six days. I was the one who called the funeral home.” I looked at Miss Alma. “Half of you were at the funeral. You know exactly how fast it was.”
Three of the elderly women nodded slowly, the horrific math finally aligning in their heads.
My brother gripped the iron rungs of the fence. He looked from me to our father, the foundational mythology of his childhood crumbling in real-time.
“Dad,” Kyle asked, his voice perilously quiet. “Where did the house money go?”
