Gazing up at the top of the heavy walnut bed and flipping the curtain, which dropped tons of dust because she hadn't used it for a long time, Emily coughed a little bit. She could not tell what time it was. All the curtains were down with a layer of lace. There was a little light coming through the curtain and the lace which made her think it's been afternoon forever.

She knew that smell when everything in the room was not in sunlight for a while, being moisture mixed with dust and fungus. Everybody hates that smell, and she used to too. She was her father's pride, the family's hope, but now all she could was to lay on the cold bed, prop her head on the yellow pillow moldy with age and lack of sunlight, and wait to die. She knew it was going to happen, which she had never imagined when she was her father's little girl, but she was pretty excited about it. She will be free soon.

The door upstairs was making noise again, which sounded like moving bones when old people stretched. They're too old to stretch, and same for this door, it was too old to hold all the secrets in the house. Only Old J was using it. Emily never knew who Old J was. He hardly spoke a word when she was little, and never talked after everybody else left the house. She heard her father called him J once, so that became how she called him too. Now J became Old J, and she was dying. She couldn't help but to keep recalling her past. She guessed she never had the right to think about what she wanted, but finally the chance came even though it wouldn't be for too long.

Everybody believed she knew nothing about the world outside of her house, but she did. She had Old J. Some people just called him 'Negro man,' so he made a little name tag 'J' and sewed on his clothes on the chest part. Sometimes it took him over two hours to get food, and all he brought back were potatoes, so then she knew the weather was bad. J also brought some notes or letters back home, probably from that boring tax department that never made the effort to make lives better, or from that stupid mayor or the judge who thought they were helping her and building her good reputation in the town by suggesting her clean the smell. Of course she knew about that smell, the unfailing smell. She cleaned it and moved downstairs, but it was still there, like the nightmare and what all they did to her. It would never disappear.

People thought she loved her father so much, who was powerful and stubborn, that she even became as stubborn as her father, or more. 'I wish it's true though,' Emily thought. Her father used to be her hero, because she heard the story of him fighting with her relatives for the housing of her grandaunt and got a home for her a thousand times. She believed he was brave to fight against those ferocious relatives who would definitely attack him back by spreading bad rumors if they couldn't take any advantages at all. He made it.

He gave her a home. She never heard about the story of her mother from her father. They always said that she was a poor girl from the suburb who married her father, the first heir in the big family, and just for the money. Emily was very confused with this story because if she only needed money then it would be hard to find a man in the town who was richer than her father. If not, why would her mother leave her alone and disappeared? Then another rumor came. They said her mother had an arrangement with her father's family that she had to give birth to her father's child and leave right after with lot of money in return. 'This one makes more sense,' she nodded, sitting in the corner of the garden and listening to the neighbors in town gossiping.

Her mother could be a timid, poor girl who was forced to save her family by marrying a man she didn't know and giving birth to a baby she couldn't keep. Sometimes she felt kind of sympathetic to her mother, since she herself could not find a way to solve the problem if she were in that situation. 'Poor mother! She must have been heartbroken and crying while leaving me alone here!'

Pulling her grey hair, lying there and dying, she felt ridiculous. 'Who would love me? Nobody! Ever! But him!…Now I will be with him again soon.' And with that she remembered the past, before all of this ever happened.

Everything changed after two months since J worked in Emily's house. She could still remember that it was a sunny day. The cherry in her garden just blossomed, which made her stay outside and draw for the whole afternoon. She really enjoyed nature and keeping every pretty moment saved by drawing. J helped her choose each drawing scene for a while. He kept saying every scene was good, which could not be true, and it made her angry with J, so she told him to go nap. Maybe sleep would help him stay calm and to understand what she was actually saying. She didn't see J that day after that until she figured that he was one step behind her father, who was stomping around while his hands waved crazily around in an extreme anger. She hadn't seen him this furious before, so she ran towards him with her arms open. 'He would hug me, kiss me and not be angry anymore,' she thought. Emily was wrong. Her father shoved her aside with a "get out of my face!" She fell to the pavement of the road.

She was shocked and didn't realize that her legs and hands were bleeding because of the sand and rock on the road. She would have been crying if it had happened to her before, whereas now her mouth was wide opened but she could not make a single sound. Her drawing board was thrown amongst the grass, full of dirt. J was standing next to her, neither moving nor playing with her as usual. She didn't know what happened at that point, but everything seemed to start to change after then.

Her father began to come back late every day. Emily was sure he was not late due to work, because his boots were very muddy. He might have even been out of town. An envelope of drawings of a middle-age woman and another girl her age was hidden in her father's dresser in his room. Emily carefully snuck in to discover it, concerned with his behavior. The corners of these drawings appeared yellow and crumpled. Her father hardly talked to her since then. She ate alone all the time. Even if he got back early, there was only the awkward silence and the sound of silverware clanking on the table. She became silent too. Her drawing board was covered with curtains which were covered with dust from under her bed. Every single sound, even the sound of J watering the flower could be heard clearly.

Then her father was simply gone. She couldn't find him in the house or even in the town. All his clothes were still there but the envelope of drawings was gone. They discovered a body nearby but she had no idea where that body was from, only that she was sure that he had merely left despite everybody else asserting he died.

That memory hurt her. Emily closed her eyes for a moment. Last time she was this sick was over forty years ago when her father was 'dead.' She recovered last time, which probably wouldn't happen this time. She knew she was too old, too stubborn, lacking the youth she once had then. Old J cleaned upstairs yesterday for sure, but she can almost smell him: Homer Barron, the man she would never get over.

The first time Emily saw Homer was when the first group of workers went into town for the construction. He was so different from the other men and his smile was so bright, like the sunshine. Nobody would ever give her a big smile like that, even her father. She suddenly found out that she was becoming obsessed with him. Without having her eyes on him, she found it difficult to even breathe. She knew all those rumors, just as how she knew when she was little, but it all could not stop her love. Yes, she believed that she fell in love with him, because a person who had bright and charming smile wouldn't leave her alone like her father did. She had been avoiding men like her father, because being left behind once in her life was enough and took her too long to recover from…

There was another girl who went to the town and visited Homer quite often. It made Emily suspicious. She looked upper class, having a happy family and being quite pretty, which are all the qualities girls dreamed to possess, but Emily didn't care. No matter how pretty the girl was, Homer loved Emily. He told her. The first time in her life she thought she understood what her father was thinking before he left when he saw she was trying hard to please him. Now it's her turn to watch that girl trying hard to please Homer. Emily completely understood why Homer was so popular among girls. He listened to people. He made you feel you were loved, respected, and valued. Homer knew the story of Emily being left behind, and he cried. His tears looked like pearls. He held her hands, promising that he would take care of her forever. They were loving and caring towards each other.

But they could not leave. Homer told Emily that the girl followed him to this town had an upper class father, who could easily destroy them by stripping away their job opportunities. So they devised a plan. Homer had the plan but he needed Emily's help. They decided to kill the girl so that she couldn't tell anything to her father, which meant they could be together peacefully. Emily was excited about this plan. Even if it meant doing something so terrible, just being involved in Homer's life made her happy beyond belief. That excitement made her ignore all those other things. The day the construction was finished and workers would begin to leave was chosen for the date of the plan. Homer held onto the poison Emily got from town, hugging her and kissing her, something her father never did to her, and Emily became extremely talkative. The couple felt one step close to their happy life.

However, that was also the last time she saw her Homer. She became seriously sick again, like a flower rapidly fading. Another important person who held a huge part in her life left her once again. She heard the rumor again, which made it even more painful. She put layers over layers of curtains over her window, and decided not to go outside anymore. The world was too cruel to her. Then she started to smell the odor, a stench of the dead filled her house. She became so deeply desperate, the worst she'd ever felt, enough for her to push past the depression to explore the source upstairs.

Homer had died. Killed by the poison she had bought for killing the upper class girl. She wanted to cry, but since she didn't cry the first time being left when she was little and she would not cry this time now that she was an adult. She discovered a letter in Homer's suit. He dressed up nicely before he drank that poison, smiling like he did so many times before. Now no warmth and bright smile was there any longer. One of his arms lied on the floor. She remembered being still in his arms, reading or drawing. She read the letter.

Dearest Emily,

You're the sunshine in my life even though they all say you're as obstinate and boring as your father. Sometimes I can't even tell if I loved your painting first or loved you first. I was climbing the ladders of the construction while I saw you drawing next to the window, tucking your hair behind your ear. The world is so different in your eyes, and I wonder how I look in your eyes. I really want to have you draw me, but I don't know if I'm the same type of person as what people in the town say.

I'm going to tell you this story that I've known for months. The upper class girl is your cousin. I was a worker for her family's house, and that's when I discovered this story. All those guesses you told me were correct, except that she was not your mother. She gave birth to the baby, and felt regret about the arrangement she had with the man's family, so she made her brother bring his baby to visit her. That's you, my dear. The babies were switched. If I was not wrong, the man that has worked in your house was your father, and the man you called 'your father' was truly your uncle. The woman, who was your aunt, switched you and her baby so that she can keep her daughter with her. Your father, the servant, missed you so he started to work here, but he felt it hard to live with you in the same house while you were the master, so he told the truth to your uncle, which I believe is the reason he finally left you and found his own daughter, your cousin, who was the upper class girl.

From the moment you told me the story, I knew there was no way we can escape from this trap, made from the moment your aunt switched the babies. The reason I died is to make you live my life. Your life will be filled with love and my wishes. I pretended that I left the town with the construction group so your cousin will leave so that your life will never be messed up due to the last generations' faults.

Love

Homer Barron