shop. I smell the rich dark roast and, fainter, the buttery aroma of fresh pastry. I can’t see the names of any of the establishments or enough details to make identifying them possible.
Now I’m in a riverfront park. There’s a parking lot, playground equipment, a broad asphalt track used by runners. I’m not one of them. I prefer to get my exercise in a shopping mall or a kitchen, which explains why I’m...plump, says my mother. Fat, says my sister. Curvaceous, says my grandmother. Like a woman should be.
I follow the trail as it leads out of town into the woods that border the river. It starts to rain, a gentle mist that gradually gains intensity, growing into fatter, forceful drops. The sky darkens, but I can’t turn around. Something draws me along the trail, to its end, onto a faint path that sticks close to the river. With each breath I inhale the smells so foreign to me, the city girl: decaying leaves, mud, water, fish. Nature.
The trail peters out fifteen feet ahead. I stand beside a fallen tree, downed so long ago that it seems impossible it ever could have stood upright. Some of its ghostly branches reach into the slow-moving river; others rise into the night sky like phantom limbs from phantom dead. They beckon me, and I move closer, until lightning flashes, brilliant and blinding, frightening me, making me spin and turn back the way I came.
My pace picks up until I’m running as fast as my three-inch heels and tight skirt will allow. I feel something following, something that escaped the fallen tree. The parking lot, the town, is ahead, the people I can’t see, but the thing behind me is closer, ever closer, and suddenly I trip—
Nevaeh Wilson’s breath caught with such force that her chest and throat ached. Though her eyes were still closed, she laid her arm over them and concentrated on filling her lungs, slowing her heart rate. She hated dreams, especially the repetitive ones. Especially the ones she was actually a part of.
Most of the dreams were harmless—about friends, acquaintances, occasionally strangers, about falling in love and having babies and gentle, easy deaths, breaking hearts and starting over.
This dream disturbed her.
Finally, she removed her arm and glanced around the room. It was comforting in the way old familiar things were. She’d lived most of her life in this room, with her parents down the hall, her sister, Marieka, next door, her mother’s mother across the hall. She’d been ten when she moved into it, not sure she was ready to have a room all to herself. But there’d been no doubt that Marieka was ready. She was tired of having her big sister hanging around all the time. She needed privacy and peace.
Now here they were, twenty-eight and twenty-seven, still living in their mother’s house with their mother and grandmother and a lifetime of memories.
Nev checked the clock. Five-fifteen. If she managed to fall back to sleep, the dream might return. Tossing back the covers, she stood, stretched her arms high and then touched the floor before shrugging into her bathrobe and stepping into scuffs.
The upstairs was dimly lit by a single bulb shining up from the foyer. She tiptoed past Marieka’s room and then went down the steps, avoiding the creaky ones that had always alerted their father to their sneaking about. He’d been gone five years, but the habit was still with her.
The aroma of coffee led her to the kitchen, where YaYa was sitting on the padded bench of the breakfast nook. Her grandmother was seventy-two and didn’t have much need for sleep. Never had. She could function better on four hours than most people could on double that.
She didn’t look up from the computer screen as Nev shuffled in. “About time you got up. Your coffee’s ready. Get your cereal and sit down before your mama wakes up.”
Nev inhaled, and the chicory of her favorite New Orleans roast separated itself on the warm air from YaYa’s Newman’s Own blend. Usually YaYa just fixed her own and then set up the Keurig so all Nev had to do was push a button. Nev didn’t question why she had deviated from morning routine. She just measured out a bowl of cereal, topped it with one-half cup light coconut milk and joined her at the table. “Any news?”
The first words out of her mouth every morning, and they could keep YaYa talking until Nev had enough caffeine in her to take part in the conversation.
“Politicians are all crooked, but that’s been true since the beginning of time. Gonna be sunny and humid today.” YaYa snorted. “August in Georgia. That’s not news, either. I got three new followers on Twitter and two new subscribers to my blog. That means I got more on both than Rachelle.”
She grinned at Nev over the monitor. Who ever would have guessed when she retired from her housekeeping job at the nursing home that she would become the internet maven of Magnolia Street? Nev’s mother, Lima—like the city, not the bean—called her a foolish old woman. Lima didn’t even have an email account. Marieka sought help from YaYa in keeping up with her own social media. Nev was just happy she had a passion in her life.
YaYa looked down the hall toward the stairs and then said, “Okay, scoot on around. I’ve got something to show you.”
Nev slid around the U-shaped bench until she and YaYa anchored the U with the laptop open between them. With a few fast clicks of the mouse, YaYa brought up a website, scrolled down and clicked again, and an enlarging photo appeared on the screen. “Does this look familiar?”
Nev’s nerves tightened, and her stomach tumbled enough to make her set the coffee down. She’d confided her dreams in YaYa, of course, no one else, and her grandmother had assured her that if the dreams had significance, they’d find the town.
How many hours had YaYa searched the internet? How many pictures of small Southern towns, squares, river parks had she looked through? Each time she’d found something encouraging, she’d shown Nev, and each time Nev had stared at the pictures, willing herself to—
To recognize or not? The dream scared her. She would prefer to believe the place didn’t exist so then it would go away. But after nearly a month, it was apparent it wasn’t going away. Better to find out its location so she could do whatever she needed to get rid of it, right?
So far none of the places YaYa had shown her were right. She had so little to work with: a square, a gazebo, a river, a handful of businesses virtually all small towns had. But she kept looking, kept cruising the Net, partly because the digital age fascinated her but mostly because she loved her granddaughter.
Nev took a deep breath as the photo finished loading, squeezed her eyes shut a moment and then looked. It was the downtown area of a not-too-small town. On the left side of the screen, green grass, flowers and a white gazebo filled an entire city block. On the right side were businesses: a coffee shop, a drugstore, a lawyer’s office, a hot dog shop, a florist, a children’s clothing store and, at the far end, a restaurant. Beyond it was a highway, a narrow strip of land, a bit of grass with playground equipment.
The photographer had stood at the corner, next to the coffee shop, and taken the shot. Nev had stood at the corner, too. Had walked that sidewalk. Had crossed that highway and passed those kids’ toys.
Though she’d never been there in her life.
“You recognize it.” YaYa’s voice was low but triumphant. She nudged Nev’s coffee closer to her. “Take a drink.”
Nev numbly obeyed, lifting the cup, breathing deeply, drinking deeply. While she stared, YaYa sent more pictures scrolling across the computer screen. A close-up of the war memorials. The gazebo decked out in pastels for Easter. A front view of Ellie’s Deli, the homey kind of place that invited customers to sit for a while
