My Wealthy Grandmother Left Me a Single Brass Key and No Inheritance
But it was the walls that made me stop, my hand rising to my throat as I looked around the room.
Every inch of the wooden studs had been covered in clean drywall, taped, sanded, and painted a bright, flat white.
And on those white walls, hung in neat, straight rows that stretched from the concrete floor to the ceiling, were hundreds of black wooden picture frames.
I took three steps forward, the gravel on my boots leaving small gray tracks on the clean floor.
The nearest frame held a photograph of me when I was six years old, wearing a blue summer dress and holding a plastic spade in the garden at Oakhaven.
Next to it was a photograph of my eighth-grade science fair project, my face small and serious behind a display board about volcanoes.
I moved down the row, my eyes scanning the frames, my breath shallow as I recognized the details of my own past.
There was a picture of me working behind the counter at my first job in the bakery, wearing a flour-dusted apron and holding a wooden tray of rolls.
