We Used to Live Here

Eve takes the letter with her, but before she leaves she notices hundreds of ants all crawling down a hallway that looks like a hospital and sees her toy Mo sitting on the floor. She picks it up and confirms that it has all the marks that her toy had. Next, Eve sees Charlie, but she isn’t the same. She looks dead but still alive, and completely ancient. The ants swarm around her feet and then crawl up her body and into her mouth, but she doesn’t react. When Charlie returns to consciousness, she’s shocked to see Eve and tells her she shouldn’t be there “yet.” Charlie tells Eve to hide, warning that Alison is approaching. Too late, Eve turns around and sees Alison.

Charlie runs the opposite way, and Eve follows, eventually finding a wardrobe to hide in. She watches as Alison enters and looks toward the wardrobe. Eve suddenly sees mental images of Alison’s life, as though she’s reliving it, and they confirm that Thomas replaced Alison. After stabbing him, she was taken to a hospital, and then the memory ends. Alison puts down the hammer and leaves the room, and moments later Thomas appears. Noticing the hammer, he picks it up and places it on a rack. When he leaves, Eve exits the wardrobe and finds that she’s back by the staircase leading upstairs. She picks up the hammer, prepared to fight whatever awaits her.

Clutching the hammer, Eve slowly creeps up the stairwell. She hears voices and footsteps above her and knows it’s the family. Eve enters the living room and finds it completely redecorated. She can hear the family talking about her. Thomas comes up behind her and grabs her arm, spinning her around and asking why she’s holding a hammer. He calls her “Emma” and a “lunatic.” “Emma,” Thomas claims, is his sister and is staying in their home. Eve wonders if Thomas is right, and she really has been hallucinating everything. She lies about the hammer, saying she was just going to hang up some paintings, and Thomas looks doubtful but doesn’t challenge her. He then insists that she join the family for dinner.

An obituary of Alison’s father’s death confirms that she was the only child of her parents, the Fausts, and that Alison’s father had a band called “Ring of Eyes” (263).

Thomas takes Eve into the dining room and has her lie about why she was holding the hammer. Eve plays along with everything to prevent it from getting worse, even holding herself together while watching Shylo act loyal toward Thomas instead of her. Jenny notices that Eve (whom everyone now calls Emma) is missing a tattoo that Jenny remembers her having, as though she can tell that Eve is someone else. When Thomas tells Eve that she’s being evicted from the house and must find somewhere else to live, he adds that perhaps “Charlotte” (referring to Emma’s ex-girlfriend) could help Eve for a while.

Suddenly, Eve notices that Paige is wearing Charlie’s locket, but when Paige opens it, it’s empty. Unable to take any more, Eve grabs a corkscrew off the table and holds it against Paige’s neck, trying to decide her next move. Thomas tries to calm her down, but she yells at him, insisting that her name isn’t Emma and asking what happened to Charlie. She threatens to hurt Paige if someone doesn’t explain what’s going on. Paige stabs Eve in the leg with a steak knife. Eve retaliates by stabbing Paige in the throat, and she dies moments later as Thomas wails and cries. He calls the police as Eve runs for the door. Finding it still locked, she runs to Alison’s bedroom to hide. Alison appears to be standing in the corner until Thomas comes into the room, and then she disappears.

Thomas pursues Eve and attempts to choke her, and Eve manages to swing the hammer at his face, catching his jaw and ripping it open. He yells at Eve, referring to himself as “we” and claiming to be responsible for all life on earth. He refers to her as “Evelyn” rather than Emma. Eve grabs the tire chains, swings them at Thomas’s head, and then chokes him. Just then, two police officers appear and take Eve down, saving Thomas and arresting her. Walking to the police car, Eve looks back and sees Alison, who now looks alive and healthy.

A document describes the Eve Palmer interrogation video through the lens of a documentary. In this description, Eve is known as Emma, and no evidence of her other life exists. Even her parents don’t know her. Eve is presumed to be taking an insanity plea for Paige’s murder and the attack on Thomas. The legal and political systems deny everything she claims is true, and the police officer who interrogates her tells her that Thomas is still alive, but barely. Suddenly, Eve understands why she’s still trapped in this alternate reality and panics. The video ends abruptly.

Eve writes from her own perspective while living in a psychiatric hospital. She spends her days highly medicated and makes every attempt to go along with this new reality so that she can one day be released. Eve remembers her former life and hangs onto these memories, only occasionally doubting that she was that person. She continuously tries to call Charlotte, even though she knows it isn’t the Charlie she knew. When Charlotte finally answers one day, she has difficulty talking to Eve, explaining that she left one night years ago without any explanation.

Eve has access to the internet for 10 minutes a day and uses it to research alternate realities. The evidence she gathers makes up the documents strewn throughout the novel.

Eventually, Eve resigns herself to being trapped in this world and decides to put all her focus into healing. This comes to a halt when she sees an ant on her ceiling one day, crawling in circles. It’s a sign that Thomas has come to visit, and when he arrives, he pretends to forgive Eve. She has little to say to him. When Thomas leaves, he gives Eve the locket that Charlie wore, and within it is the photo of Eve, confirming that her former life does exist.

A document reveals Charlie’s online posts explaining that her girlfriend (Eve) disappeared with no trace one day. When Charlie returned to their house, she found it boarded up, as if they had never moved in, and only Shylo was there. Everyone tells Charlie, like they tell Eve, that she’s imagining something, but Charlie is certain that the life she remembers is real.