I painted every wall myself, but the front door was the only color I agonized over. Blue like the sky at the end of a night shift, when the world is quiet and briefly feels like it belongs to you.
For four years, nobody from Dayton, Ohio, had crossed that threshold.
That was deliberate.
It was also not the story my family told.
They said I disappeared.
Here’s the problem with that word.
Disappeared is passive.
Fog disappears.
Keys disappear.
The word erases whoever did the erasing.
What actually happened
