Through the window, I could see a lavish room with Oriental rugs and the kind of furniture you’d read about in a novel, timeless and Dickensian. There was an ornate fireplace and thick wooden shelves lined with books.

The opposite of our shabby little apartment in Illinois. Six hundred square feet, the apartment had only one door in the entire unit—the arched entrance to the bathroom, that separated it from the kitchen/living room/bedroom that bled together like a heaping tumor. As much as I complained about the lack of space and storage, I wouldn’t have traded our compact place in the city for anywhere else.

Certainly not a place like this, I thought, returning to the yard to look up at the second-floor windows. The gargoyles stared back at me, eyes dark and accusatory. They were perched for flight, as though any minute now they might break free from their stony restraints.

I returned to the front door, knocking harder this time; then, finally, I left my suitcase on the porch and wove my way around the back of the property.

It was here that I caught my first glimpse of the past—the Belladonna statue, mother and daughter, and the crumbling fountain and koi pond I recognized from my childhood. In a trance, I walked straight toward one of the statues. It was streaked with lichen and crumbling, little pieces of marble clinging to the soles of my thrift store sneakers. For a moment, I was a child again … Mom and I, racing through the yard, ducking behind statues, hair floating like kites in the wind as we played a game I liked to call “Palace Garden”.

I can’t believe I’d forgotten until now… How old must I have been, three or four…?

Yes, I have been here before.

I can’t remember the inside of the house, but I remember these mysterious grounds … the secrets I thought they might hold…

How strange it is that those slivers of memory come floating back in an instant, catching us by surprise…

“Norah, dear! Is that you?”

I jumped at the sound of a woman’s voice, pulling my hand away from the broken, weathered nose of a sweet cherub. I hadn’t heard anyone pull up, only the gentle breeze whistling between the statues, through the poorly trimmed hedges and trees. The garden and lands were always wild. But not this rundown. Not this unkempt, I remembered.

At the sound of her voice, I turned around. , It took me a moment to recognize her.

Sara looked like an older version of my mother, but frailer. People often said my mother had reminded them of a young Meryl Streep. I didn’t see it.