Her personal effects are gone—some went to me and Nons, like the glass bottles and gilded jewelry bowls and luxurious signature cosmetics, for us to spritz and spread onto our prepubescent bodies, to feel her close for just a minute even though that was probably a giant waste of La Mer—and others were just disposed of, I guess. The green-veined marble, which always looked like frog skin to me, is so cool to the touch. I turn the golden fleur-de-lis-shaped sink handle with a rusty squeak: The water spatters amber for a minute, then runs clean.

With my fingers, I work my way under the sink, toward the latch behind the false panel.

It’s still there.

My nerves are the size of elephants in my stomach. I could vomit, but I don’t want to clean, so I swallow five times, then take a quick yogic breath of fire and press down on it. And wait.

I hear a clunk overhead, and the panel in her ceiling exhales and cracks open half an inch.

Jammed.

When I was young, the panel would drop open like an unhinged jaw, and a woven rope would fall through the air, tonguing at the top of Mama’s head. A sick monster is licking you! I would squeal. No, I’m climbing up Rapunzel’s marvelously thick yellow braid, Mama replied, tugging on its greasy length to bring down the ladder.

I run for a broom, for a stick, anything to help me smack at the panel. I find an old chair in the hall. Straining on my tippy toes, I just make it, and with a shooooomf, years’ worth of dust swirls through the space and blankets me, transforming the bathroom into a disgusting and magical space in the low light. Coughing, pulsing with adrenaline, I yank down the rope and ladder, which now seem small—as if made for children.

I feel disembodied as my palms and fingers close around the first rung. The flaking metal stings the skin on my palms. I don’t know if it’ll hold my weight. But it held hers, so I begin to climb, limbs shaking.

The windows in the tower above my head are dark with grime, so it’s impossible to see out as I pull myself up, up, up. I feel, by memory, the first ledge by the window. That’s where she sometimes lay down the blanket for us both to relax on.

“Our tree house,” she whispered to me, and then she would find one of the books we stashed in the black metal magazine storage box, so they wouldn’t get wet if the windows broke when a storm rolled through.

I step onto the ledge, feeling my way around the dark, and that’s when my foot hits something with a clang.

The magazine box.

I feel faint.