Free Diamond Head by Cecily Wong

her body tenses, drawing her skin closer to her, willing it to stay her own. She turns slowly, careful not to exhale, and leaves the room. Theresa follows and Amy closes the door behind them, pulling on the knob to tighten the seal. She breathes.
    “Has it changed at all?” Theresa asks as they stand in the hallway. “I mean, since you and Maku lived there. Did it look like that?”
    “I—” Amy pauses, her hand still clutching the knob. “It’s exactly as I remember, actually.”
    “It’s so weird, imagining you guys here.” Theresa touches the doorframe and fits her fingers into its vertical grooves.
    “It was very brief. We weren’t here more than a month before we moved to Hawaii Kai.”
    “I know,” Theresa says.
    Amy nods, once. Her lips press firmly together.
    “Come on,” she says. “We should check the other rooms.”
    They follow the hall back to the staircase, knocking on each closed door along the way and peeking in when no one answers. As Amy suspected, each of the rooms is empty.
    At the top of the stairs, they make the decision to descend, to look for her in the kitchen and the sunroom and out back by the waterfall. But when they reach the bottom, Amy hesitates. She looks in the opposite direction, down a hallway lined with dark wooden panels.
    “It wouldn’t make sense,” Amy tells her daughter. “After your Ye Ye died, Kaipo told me she never goes down there, but I don’t know. I feel like it’s worth a look.”
    Theresa nods. Together they walk to the end of the corridor where the passage splits in two. To the left there is an open archway; to the right are double doors. Amy reaches for the knob and finds that it’s locked.
    “It’s Kaipo’s now,” she says absently, standing before the double doors. “She can’t be in there. She doesn’t have a key.”
    “Mom,” Theresa whispers. She’s turned in the opposite direction but her arm extends behind her, grasping at her mother. “Mom,” she says again.
    Amy turns, and through the archway she sees her.
    In the study, all the lights are switched on. The lamp on the desk, the chandelier above it, the sconces that line the paneledcherry-wood walls—they all seem to be pointing at what’s taking place on the floor.
    There’s a trail of white paper that leads from a row of shelves behind the desk to where Mrs. Leong sits on the floor with her knees pressed to her chest. The bits of paper are various sizes, some as large as a full crumpled sheet, others like paper rubble, like mismatched confetti. Along the path, framed photographs lie scattered in the chaos. On the shelf, a mostly unwrapped frame lies facedown. On the desk there’s another picture, fully exposed. As Amy moves closer, she sees more and more of the silver frames, unwrapped and strewn about on almost every surface.
    In the middle of the brightly lit mess, Mrs. Leong sits with a photograph held close to her face. She clasps it with both hands. She stares at it with a blank intensity.
    “Mrs. Leong,” Amy says softly, knocking on the open door. She’s ten feet away but the woman does not look up.
    “Mrs. Leong,” Amy says again. She’s close enough now to reach down and touch her. “It’s Amy,” she says.
    “Can she hear us?” Theresa whispers behind her mother.
    Amy shushes her. She lowers herself to the ground, placing both palms on the floor to steady herself.
    “Mrs. Leong, I’ve come to get you. I’ve come to bring you to the funeral. Would you still like to come?”
    Mrs. Leong’s fingers tighten around the picture frame. Amy watches the tips of her fingers grow white and softly begin to tremble. Still she does not look at Amy.
    “What do you have there? Can I see? Is it all right if I take a look?”
    Amy removes her shoes and sits on the ground. A bit of paper clings to her ankle. Amy shifts her weight toward the woman and takes in her face. It summons a memory, both faraway and entirely vivid, of the last time they were together like this.