The package sat on Marlene Okoye's porch like a coffin for a child's doll, wrapped in brown paper that had no return address, no postmark, no evidence it had traveled through any postal system at all. She found it there when she opened the door to retrieve the Bangor Daily News, and for a moment—just a moment—she felt the world tilt sideways the way it had that night in Lagos when she was twelve, when the smoke started creeping under her bedroom door like the fingers of the dead.
At sixty-seven, Marlene had gotten good at pushing such feelings down into the deep places where she kept all the other sharp-edged memories. Thirty-eight years of hospice nursing had taught her that death was just a doorway, nothing more, nothing less. She'd held more hands during that final passage than she could count. But this package, sitting there in the weak October sunlight of a Maine morning, made her hands shake in a way they hadn't since she'd gotten sober in '92.
She carried it inside, past the hallway lined with certificates and commendations, past the photos of nursing colleagues and grateful families—never any pictures of her own family, never anything from before America—and set it on her kitchen table. Mr. Ojukwu, her orange tabby, jumped up to investigate, but when he sniffed the package, he hissed and bolted from the room.
Inside the brown paper was a box. Inside the box was tissue paper, yellow with age. And inside the tissue paper was her father's watch.
The Rolex Oyster Perpetual, gold-faced with a leather band, that Papa had worn every day of his life until the night he didn't make it out of the house. The watch that should have been melted, destroyed, consumed in the fire that had eaten their home in Victoria Island like a hungry beast. But here it was, the leather unmarred, the gold gleaming, and when she held it to her ear—God help her, why did she do that?—it was still ticking.
*Tick. Tick. Tick.*
The same rhythm as Adaeze's heart when Marlene used to let her little sister crawl into her bed during thunderstorms.
She set the watch down and reached for her phone, then stopped. Who would she call? The police? To report what—that someone had sent her an impossible gift? Dr. Patel, her therapist? She'd stopped seeing him three years ago, declared fully processed and functionally healing. Tommy Brennan, the mailman? He hadn't delivered this.
The watch face caught the morning light, and for a moment she swore she saw something reflected in it—a child's face, dark-skinned and wide-eyed, mouth open in a scream or a song.
Marlene made herself a cup of tea, English Breakfast with no sugar, and sat at the table staring at the watch until the tea went cold. Then she picked it up, wound it properly, and fastened it around her wrist. It fit perfectly, as if it had been sized for her, not for Papa's thick wrist.
That's when she noticed the note, tucked into the bottom of the box. The handwriting was careful, childlike, done in pencil:
*Things that burn don't always die. Things that die don't always stay dead. I've been drawing you, Marlene. I've been drawing you for so long.*
The pencil marks looked fresh, but the paper felt ancient, brittle. And the handwriting—she knew that handwriting. She'd helped Adaeze practice her letters, spent hours at their kitchen table in Lagos, teaching her to write her name. A-D-A-E-Z-E. "It means 'daughter of wealth,'" Mama had said. "But wealth isn't always money."
No, Marlene thought, sometimes wealth was guilt that compounded interest over decades.
She stood up too fast, and the kitchen spun. Through the window, she saw Tommy Brennan's mail truck pulling up to her neighbor's house. Good, reliable Tommy with his twelve-step medallions and his haunted eyes. She'd nursed his mother through her final months of lung cancer, and he still brought her tomatoes from his garden every summer.
The doorbell rang.
Marlene froze. Tommy was still at the neighbor's house; she could see him. So who—
The doorbell rang again, followed by a knock. A child's knock—*rap-rap-rap-rap*—the way Adaeze used to knock on her bedroom door when she had nightmares about her drawings coming true.
Marlene moved to the door like she was walking through water. Through the peephole, she saw nothing. But there was another package on the porch.
This one was smaller, wrapped in the same brown paper. She brought it inside and opened it with the kitchen scissors, the ones she'd used to cut bandages for countless patients. Inside was a child's drawing, done in crayon on manila paper. It showed two girls, one bigger, one smaller, standing in front of a house. The house was on fire, but the girls were smiling. At the bottom, in that same careful handwriting:
*You thought I was sleeping.*
The drawing smelled like smoke—not old smoke, but fresh, as if it had just been pulled from a burning building. And there was something else, something that made Marlene's throat close up. The smaller girl in the drawing had no eyes, just black holes where eyes should be.
She'd drawn pictures like this, Adaeze had. Always drawing, always showing things that hadn't happened yet. The day before Papa's promotion, she'd drawn him in a big office. The week before Mama's sister died, she'd drawn an empty chair at a feast. And the night before the fire—
No. Marlene wouldn't think about that. Couldn't.
But the memories came anyway, rising like smoke.
The night before the fire, Adaeze had drawn their house consumed by flames, with something dark and winged rising from the ashes. Mama had found it, had beaten Adaeze with a wooden spoon, calling her a witch, saying she was inviting evil. And Marlene, twelve years old and desperate to be good, desperate to be the perfect daughter, had gathered all of Adaeze's drawings while her sister slept. She'd taken them to the kitchen, planning to burn them in the sink, to destroy the evidence of whatever strange gift or curse her sister carried.
But the match had fallen. One match, falling like a star onto the newspapers Papa had left by the stove. And then the curtains, so fast, so hungry, and Marlene had run, screaming for everyone to wake up, but the smoke was already so thick, and Papa had pushed her out the window, and Mama had been right behind her, and they thought Adaeze was already out, thought she'd gone out the back, but—
The doorbell rang again.
This time when Marlene looked, Tommy was there, holding his mail bag, looking concerned.
"Mrs. Okoye? You okay in there? I saw you at the door earlier but you didn't answer."
She opened the door, tried to smile. "I'm fine, Tommy. Just—distracted."
He studied her face with those AA-trained eyes that knew what lying looked like. "You sure? You look like you've seen a ghost."
"Maybe I have," she said, and then wished she hadn't because his face got that careful look people got when they thought someone might be having a breakdown.
"I didn't have any packages for you today," he said slowly. "But I saw one on your porch this morning. And another one just now."
"Yes."
"No postage."
"No."
"That's... unusual. Want me to look into it? I know people at the distribution center."
She almost said yes. Almost invited him in, showed him the watch, the drawing. But what would she say? That her dead sister was sending her presents? That the guilt she'd carried for fifty-five years had developed its own zip code?
"It's probably just a neighbor," she said. "You know how people are around here. Always leaving casseroles and things."
Tommy didn't look convinced, but he didn't push. That was the thing about people in recovery—they understood that everyone had their own bottom to hit.
After he left, Marlene sat at her kitchen table and really looked at the drawing. The crayon strokes were confident, not like a child's usual scribbles. And there was something in the corner she hadn't noticed before—a figure standing apart from the burning house and the two girls. It was drawn in black crayon, just a shadow really, but it had wings. Or maybe they were just arms, raised high.
Her phone buzzed. A text from an unknown number. She opened it, and her heart stopped.
It was a photo of her, taken from outside her kitchen window. In the photo, she was holding the drawing, and standing behind her, barely visible in the shadows of her hallway, was a figure. Small, like a child. But the proportions were wrong somehow, stretched, as if someone had taken a child's body and pulled it like taffy.
The text beneath the photo said: *I grew up too, Marlene. Just differently.*
She turned, but the hallway was empty. Of course it was. This was trauma, she told herself, PTSD finally catching up after decades of suppression. She'd seen it in patients, the way old grief could manifest as hallucinations, paranoia. She needed to call Dr. Patel, get back on medication maybe, certainly back into therapy.
But then she smelled it—cherry blossoms. Adaeze's favorite scent, from the perfume she'd stolen from Mama's dresser and worn to school, getting in trouble but not caring because she said it made her feel like spring in Japan, a place she'd never been but drew pictures of anyway.
"Adaeze?" The name came out as a whisper.
No answer. But upstairs, from the spare bedroom she used as storage, came the sound of humming. A child's humming. The lullaby Mama used to sing, the one about the girl who married the river and became water.
Marlene climbed the stairs. Each step felt like a year backward, until she was twelve again, climbing the stairs in their house in Lagos after the fire, when the police finally let them back in to see if anything had survived. Nothing had, they said. Nothing and no one. They'd found Adaeze's body in her bedroom, curled in her closet, smoke inhalation, a mercy really, better than burning.
But they'd never let Marlene see the body. Mama had identified it, had come out of the morgue changed, hollowed out, and three months later had sent Marlene to live with Aunt Comfort in Boston. "It's better," Mama had said. "Better you grow up away from all this sorrow."
The spare bedroom door was open. Inside, on the bed she used to store winter coats, was another package. Larger than the others. The size of a child, almost.
No. She wouldn't open it. Couldn't.
But she was already moving, already reaching, already tearing at the paper with fingers that felt like they belonged to someone else. Inside was a dress. Adaeze's Easter dress, the yellow one with white flowers that Mama had saved for, the one Adaeze had worn to church the Sunday before the fire. It was perfect, pristine, still smelling faintly of cherry blossoms and something else, something chemical and sharp.
Under the dress was a photo album. Marlene had never seen it before, but she recognized the photos. They were all of her—as a child in Lagos, as a teenager in Boston, as a nursing student, at her wedding to David (who'd left after three years when she couldn't give him children, couldn't explain why she felt she didn't deserve them), at her divorce, at work, at home, last week at the grocery store, yesterday in her garden.
Hundreds of photos, spanning decades, taken from distances and angles that suggested the photographer had been invisible, or at least unnoticed. And in some of them, if she looked closely, there were shadows that didn't match the light, shadows that might have been a person, small and dark and patient.
The humming stopped.
"You let me burn."
The voice came from behind her. Not a child's voice, not an adult's either. Something in between, something that had been broken and reassembled incorrectly.
Marlene turned slowly. In the doorway stood—something. It had Adaeze's face, or a version of it, stretched over a frame that was too tall, too thin. The eyes were the worst part—not gone like in the drawing, but wrong, reflecting light that wasn't in the room.
"I didn't mean—" Marlene started.
"You burned my drawings. The ones that showed the truth. The ones that showed what was coming. And when the fire started, you ran. You left me."
"I tried to wake you—"
"I was awake." The thing that might be Adaeze stepped into the room. Its feet didn't quite touch the floor. "I was awake and hiding in the closet because I'd had another dream, another true dream, about something coming for our family. Something that had been watching us. And when the fire started, it came. It offered me a choice—die in the fire or live as something else. Guess which I chose?"
Marlene's legs gave out. She sat hard on the bed, crushing the yellow dress. "What are you?"
"I'm your sister. Changed, evolved, improved maybe. I've been watching you all these years, Marlene. Watching you save other people. All those dying souls you eased into the next world. But you never looked for me. Never questioned whether they really found my body."
"Mama said—"
"Mama knew. That's why she sent you away. She could see what I'd become, and she was afraid you would too." Adaeze—or the thing wearing her face—moved closer. "But I'm not angry anymore. I've had time to think, to understand. You were just a child too. Scared of Mama, scared of my gift, scared of being different."
"What do you want?"
"I want my sister back. I want you to stop running. I want you to see what I've become and not be afraid." She held out a hand that had too many joints. "I want you to come with me."
"Where?"
"To the place where things that burn don't die. Where all the lost things go. Where Papa is, and Mama, and all the others who've been waiting." Her smile was terrible and beautiful. "You've been helping people die for so long, Marlene. Maybe it's time you learned what comes after."
The room was getting darker, or maybe Marlene's vision was failing. But she could still see Adaeze's eyes, those wrong, impossible eyes that held galaxies of grief and love.
"I'm sorry," Marlene said. "God, Adaeze, I'm so sorry."
"I know. I've always known. That's why I'm here. To forgive you. To take you home."
And suddenly Marlene understood. The packages hadn't been threats or haunting. They'd been invitations. Breadcrumbs leading her back to a moment she'd been running from for fifty-five years.
She thought of all the hands she'd held while people died, all the families she'd comforted, all the wisdom she'd offered about letting go. But she'd never let go, had she? She'd held onto Adaeze's death like a rosary, counting guilt instead of prayers.
"If I come with you," she said, "what happens to me?"
"You become what you were always meant to be. My sister. No more, no less."
Outside, she could hear Tommy's mail truck returning, probably to check on her. Normal life, continuing its rhythm. She could stay here, in this house full of certificates and empty picture frames. She could call Dr. Patel, get medication, therapy, push this all down again. Or—
"Will it hurt?"
Adaeze's laugh was wind chimes and broken glass. "Did it hurt when you were born the first time?"
Marlene stood up. The watch on her wrist had stopped ticking. Or maybe time had. Either way, the moment stretched like taffy, like the space between heartbeats, like the pause before a house catches fire.
She took her sister's hand.
It was like touching lightning that had been frozen mid-strike. Every nerve in her body fired at once, and she could see—oh, she could see everything. The fire hadn't been an accident. It had been a doorway, opened by Adaeze's drawings, those prophetic sketches that were really maps to other places. The thing that had saved Adaeze wasn't a demon or an angel but something older, something that existed in the spaces between life and death, something that collected the lost and the guilty and the grieving.
"We have so much to show you," Adaeze said, and now her voice was a chorus. "All of us who burned but didn't die."
The room was dissolving, or maybe Marlene was. She could feel herself coming apart at the seams, all the careful stitching of her American life unraveling. But underneath, something else was emerging. Something that had always been there, waiting.
Tommy would find the house empty, just the packages and the watch and a smell like cherry blossoms mixed with smoke. He'd call the police, and they'd search, but Marlene Okoye would be gone. Just another missing person in a world full of them.
But in Lagos, in a neighborhood that had been rebuilt three times since the fire, people would start reporting strange things. Drawings appearing on walls, pictures that showed things before they happened. And two women, one tall and one small, walking the streets at dawn, leaving flowers at doors of houses where children had bad dreams.
Because things that burn don't always die.
And sisters, even separated by death and decades, sometimes find their way back to each other.
In the space between worlds, Marlene and Adaeze walked hand in hand, and Marlene finally understood what her sister had been drawing all those years ago. Not destruction, but transformation. Not an ending, but a doorway.
Behind them, the house in Derry stood empty, its windows dark. But if you looked closely, if you knew how to look, you could see shadows moving inside. Shadows that might have been memories, or might have been something else entirely. Something waiting for the next package to be delivered, the next guilty soul to be collected, the next fire to be lit.
Mr. Ojukwu, the orange tabby, sat on the porch and watched the sun set. He'd find another house, another human to adopt. Cats understood about transformation, about having multiple lives. He'd known what Marlene was the moment she'd rescued him from the shelter—not a savior, but someone who needed saving.
And now she'd been saved, in the only way that mattered.
By facing what she'd run from.
By accepting what couldn't be changed.
By letting herself burn, finally, completely, and discovering what rose from the ashes.
The watch on the kitchen table started ticking again.
*Tick. Tick. Tick.*
Like a heart that had stopped and then remembered how to beat.
Like time moving forward and backward at once.
Like a story that had ended but was also just beginning.