Photo by Dagmara Dombrovska
Becoming Marie Celeste Marie Celeste fumbled with the keys on the doorstep of the old house, trying to figure out which one would fit the antique keyhole and feeling kind of awkward as she handled the eerily large key ring like some sort of medieval housekeeper. The thing was ridiculously heavy, and it made Marie Celeste wonder what kind of person found it reasonable to carry around something of that heft all the time. She had trouble fitting it in her purse at home, so she had to throw it on the right seat of her car from which it stared at her, taking on a life of its own. Its presence made her physically uncomfortable, but in a gut level way that she couldn’t put into words. As surreal as her life had been in the past few years, Marie Celeste didn’t find this additional bit of weirdness jarring in the least, this unexpected inheritance from a great-aunt she never knew because her parents never talked about her, and she didn’t even
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