All the kids at the stop were watching me now. “Hey, there’s crazy Mrs. Morgan’s crazy daughter,” I muttered, sliding back the loose piece of siding to get the spare key. “Look, she don’t have no shoes! What a skipped track.”

But the door wasn’t locked, and with a growing sense of unease, I pocketed the key and went in. “Mom?” I called, the warmth of the house obvious on my cheeks.

There was no answer, and I wrinkled my nose. It smelled funny, like burnt metal.

“Mom? It’s me,” I said, raising my voice and shutting the door hard. “I’m sorry for waking you up again so early. I have to talk to you.” I glanced into the empty living room. God, it was quiet in here. “Mom?”

My tension eased when I heard from the kitchen the familiar sound of a plastic photo album page being unstuck. “Oh, Mom,” I said softly, and pushed into motion. “Have you been looking at pictures all night again?”

Worried, I strode into the kitchen with my damp socks squeaking against the linoleum. My mom was sitting at the table in a pair of faded jeans and a blue sweater, her hand around an empty coffee cup. Her hair was a comfortable disarray, and the photo album was open to one of our family vacations of sunburned noses and exhausted smiles. She didn’t look up as I came in, and seeing one of the stove’s burners was roaring full tilt, I quickly went to shut it off, jerking when my foot found an amulet sitting on the floor in the middle of the room.

“Jeez, Mom,” I said as I clicked the burner off and felt the heat radiating from the metal rack. “How long have you had this on?” Damn, it was glowing. That’s where the hot metal smell was coming from.

She didn’t answer, and my brow pinched in concern when I saw the never-used percolator on the counter beside the sink. It was one of those old ones you set atop the stove, and it was the only thing my dad had drunk coffee from. There was an open bag of grounds waiting to be scooped out, and the filters were scattered across the counter.

Double damn, she’d been reminiscing again.

My shoulders slumped, and I picked up the amulet and set it on the table. “Mom,” I said, putting a hand on her shoulder to bring her back to reality. “Mom, look at me.”

She smiled at me with her green eyes bloodshot and her face blotchy from crying. “Good morning, Rachel,” she said lightly, chilling me with how at odds her voice was with her appearance. “You’re up early for school. Why don’t you go back to bed for a while?”