Just Like Home

by Sarah Gailey

This is the story of monsters and what they do to those who love them, those who fear them, and those who are simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. Or, from a different perspective, those who are in the right place at the right time. Serendipity is just as cruel as it is kind. This book is dedicated to anyone who has ever loved a monster.

The Crowder House clung to the soil the way damp air clings to hot skin.

Vera wondered if, in the destruction of the old front steps, anything had been found. But of course, the thing Vera hid there must have been destroyed. She would have seen on the news if they’d found what she tucked beneath those old boards so many years before.

The house swallowed the sound immediately, because it was a house that knew how to stay quiet.

the voice that had always been flat and loveless but had turned hateful the year Vera turned twelve.

This house, though. The outside of Vera was shaped like the inside of this house. This was the house her father had built with his two strong hands. This was the goldfish tank where she’d grown to the size she would always be, even after her mother gave her away to the world.

Her mother has told her several times not to sneak, as if it’s Vera’s fault that nobody pays attention to the sounds of her life.

“It’s not true, though, right? Dad loves us.” “He loves me,” Daphne says crisply. “Your relationship with him is your own business.”

but