I’m not really a horseradish person has always been one of my mom’s favorite things to say. It’s classic Donna. Anytime me and my brother Lex used to do an impression of her, that’s the line we’d always quote. We’d turn our noses away from the offending pile of invisible horseradish, scrunch our lips up tight as if we’d just taken a bite out of a fresh lemon, and say the line. Because if there’s one thing we all know about mom, it’s that she hates horseradish. Just like we all know that dad has bad gas and that Lex thinks cats are stuck-up little tyrants. But now that I’m back home for the first time in almost two years, house sitting for my parents while they’re hiking the Adirondack Trail on vacation, I’m not so sure about any of that. Because stacked here in the basement, hidden behind dozens of cans of Campbell’s Tomato Soup and Bush’s Baked Beans, are at least twenty or thirty unopened bottles of Gold’s Prepared Horseradish.

“They can’t be dad’s, no way, Rach, not with his stomach,” I say to the empty room. Not long after I broke up with Derrick and moved back here for a month to watch the house, I got into yet another big fight with my best friend, Kristin, over how she stops talking to me every time she gets a new boyfriend. That was three weeks ago. Not surprisingly, I haven’t heard from her since. A few days after that fight, while I sat drunk and depressed in the empty living room with a bottle of Pinot Grigio in my hand and an old episode of Futurama on the TV, I invented an imaginary friend to take Kristin’s place. Her name is Rachel. She’s twenty-four just like me, but unlike me, she’s a badass who doesn’t take any shit from anyone. Thanks to this and other reasons, she’s quickly become the best friend I’ve ever had. Because apparently the secret to lifelong friendship is to create an entire person out of thin air who will never abandon you for a guy.

I look over the bottles of horseradish and then turn to the blank wall beside me, the place where Rachel would be standing if she were real.

“I don’t get it. They can’t be Lex’s either. He’s been gone longer than us.”

I imagine Rachel lowering her chin and giving me a look that says, Kara, please. We both know whose they are.

A stone-age cold seeps through the concrete floor and soaks into the soles of my bare feet.

“But why would mom buy all these if she hates horseradish so much?” I say, picking up one of the bottles. The bottle is cold and smooth, completely free of dust. The soft pad of my thumb sticks to the chilly glass.

Just then a raccoon peeks out from behind the castle of unused paper towels standing in the corner of the room. The raccoon lets out a loud chittering noise and darts toward my bare feet. A shrill scream leaps from my throat; my body shudders in panic. On reflex, I throw the bottle of horseradish to the floor and run out of the room. The bottle shatters on the floor. The raccoon’s tiny claws skitter on the concrete. I sprint up the stairs and slam the door behind me.

Back in the kitchen, I sit at the dinner table and listen to my wheezing breath, the heavy thud of my slamming heart. Once I catch my breath, I look over at Rachel.

“This fucking house, Rach. I swear.”

Instead of laughing at me or ignoring me or browsing Instagram on her phone like Kristin would do in this situation, Rachel rests a weightless hand on my shoulder and nods in understanding.

To get my mind off the raccoon, the mysterious horseradish, and the endless, empty evening sprawled out ahead of me, I tie my hair into a loose bun and pull on mom’s rubber dishwashing gloves. Then I walk into the bathroom and start cleaning the shower. With the overhead fan whirring in my ears and the sharp smell of bleach slicing the inside of my nose, I scrub hard water stains from the rounded walls of the bathtub. I scrape slimy white soap scum from the grout between the wall tiles. It feels good to stress my body like this, to do something real and tactile, to accomplish something productive with a day that would’ve been wasted on waiting for Kristin to call.

Despite the welcome distraction of these chores, it doesn’t take long for my mind to wander back to the unexplained bottles of horseradish in the basement.

“Okay,” I say, dropping the scrub brush into the tub with a clatter. “This is ridiculous Rach. We’re figuring this out.”

Minutes later I’m standing in my parents’ bedroom, sliding open the drawers of mom’s cherrywood writing desk. At the bottom of the middle drawer, laying underneath a yellow legal pad, a few issues of Star Magazine, and a calculator from the 1980s with buttons the size of postage stamps, is a red-leather book with gold-edged pages. Everyone in the family knows that mom has been an avid journal writer since she was a little girl, so I know in an instant that this is her most recent journal.

I take a deep breath and start flipping through the pages. Each entry is marked with the date and time of the writing, and nearly every page is filled with beautiful, looping, right-leaning cursive.

Though I’m curious to dive into the mysterious world of mom’s inner life, I stop myself from reading too much. Instead, I scan the pages quickly, searching for any occurrences of the word horseradish.

Near the top of the entry from May sixteenth, I strike gold. So I slide my eyes back to the beginning of the paragraph and start reading.

Oh Donna, Donna, Donna, you weak, silly little girl! I’m so disappointed in you! I thought we were done with this nonsense. Eight months and seventeen days of perfection gone in an instant, and for this? For a sale on HORSERADISH of all things? Oh Donna. You break my heart. Is this what our life has been reduced to? Compulsively buying one of the most repulsive concoctions on God’s green earth just so we can actually feel something for once? So we can feel the thrilling rush of taking advantage of a great sale at the supermarket? This is who we’ve become? The woman who buys and buys and buys every useless thing she sees in order to fill the emptiness in her heart? The woman who’s too afraid to pick up the phone to tell her own children how alone she feels in this—

I smack the book closed and slip it back into its drawer. My eyes start to burn. I raise a hand to rub a tear away, but then I remember about the bleach from the bathroom and stop myself.

“Wow,” I say to Rachel.

Laying back on the bed, I take out my phone and call mom. The call goes to voicemail. In my message, I say that I hope her and dad are staying safe and having fun. Unsure of what else to say, I tell her I love her. Then I hang up and drop my phone on the bed beside me.

Maybe you should set a reminder on your phone to remind yourself to call her more often once they get back, Rachel says, in her silent voice. I’m sure she’d love to hear from you more than once a year on her birthday.

“That’s a great idea.”

I give Rachel a thumbs up and grab my phone. But before I can set the reminder, I remember about the raccoon and the broken bottle of horseradish in the basement. So I roll off the bed, head back into the bathroom, and snatch the four-foot scrub brush out of the tub. With Lex gone, there aren’t any baseball bats or hockey sticks in the house anymore, so the scrub brush is the best I can do to defend myself against the raccoon. But it’s not until I’m standing in front of the basement door, frozen in fear, that I realize Rachel will be no help for me here. So I say fuck it and I take out my phone and call Kristin. The electronic tone trills in my ear. Kristin picks up after the third ring. I take a quick breath and start talking.

Steve Gergley is the author of the short story collection, A Quick Primer on Wallowing in Despair (LEFTOVER Books '22), and the forthcoming novel, Skyscraper (West Vine Press '23). His short fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in Hobart, Pithead Chapel, Maudlin House, X-R-A-Y Literary Magazine, Barren Magazine, New World Writing, and others. In addition to writing fiction, he has composed and recorded five albums of original music. He tweets @GergleySteve. His fiction can be found at: https://stevegergleyauthor.wordpress.com/