The Last House Guest

by Megan Miranda

That was the problem with a place like this: Everything was right out in the open, including the life you could never have.

For a long time, I was forgiven my transgressions—it was grief, and wasn’t I a tragic cliché, stuck in a loop of anger and bitterness? But people must’ve realized what I too soon understood: that grief did not create anything that had not existed before. It only heightened what was already there. Removing the binds that once shielded me.

Maybe this was how to do it. How to live a life of even-tempered safety. Where nothing harms you, but nothing thrills you. Where you have risked nothing. It took this—stepping outside Littleport and looking back in—to see my home through the eyes of a stranger. To finally get a sense of my mother when she was my age. Not what made her stay but what made her stop in the first place.