“No, but I can be here for her. I feel guilty I didn’t spend more time with Dad before…” I gulped. “Before.”
“You have to do what you think is best.”
“What do you think?” I pressed. Was I looking for permission to leave? Or encouragement to stay?
“I think time is a luxury not everyone can afford. Once I have a diagnosis and a treatment plan in place, any time I spend with someone is time I could be caring for another patient.”
A chill chased up the back of my arms. Thatsomeone…Did he mean me?
It was as if a window had opened onto our relationship and a cold wind blew through.
—
The next morning,there were tiny gaps in the living room, as painful and noticeable as missing teeth. Dad’s boots by the porch door, gone. The bowl on the kitchen counter (apinch pot I’d made in fourth grade) that had held the jumbled contents of his pockets, empty.
I refilled my father’s coffee mug—i turn wood into things. what’s your superpower?—feeling myself slip back to those early days of the pandemic, when the world I knew had been upended.
My mother blew through the house like a wind off the lake, rattling everything in her wake. “You better start packing. You’re going to be late.”
The refrain of my childhood.
“I was thinking I might change my flight. Go home Wednesday, maybe.”
She shook out the blanket on the couch before refolding it.
Which my brain took as some sort of signal to fill the silence. “I already talked to Chris. It doesn’t make any difference to him. He has to work anyway.” My mother should understand that. She worked all the time.
A sharp look over the blanket. “Don’t you have to teach tomorrow?”
I cradled the warmth in my hands for comfort. I hated dumping on Sarah. But she was my friend as well as my boss. She would understand I needed to be home right now. “My students can get along without me for a couple of days.”
My mother snorted. “Better hope the school doesn’t know that.”
“Always so encouraging. Thanks, Mom.”
“Don’t get your panties in a twist. I just meant good jobs aren’t easy to come by.”
Certainly not on the island.
My mother picked up Dad’s pile of sudoku puzzle booksfrom the floor beside his chair and dropped it in the recycling bin.
A spasm gripped me, grief or irritation. “Could you stop that?” I asked.
“What?”
“Throwing all Dad’s stuff away.” As if she couldn’t wait to clear his presence from our lives.
She looked down at the green metal thermos in her hands. “What else should I do with it?”
“You could keep it. To…to honor his memory.”
“I don’t need a bunch of stuff around the house to remember your father.”
“Maybe I do.”
“You don’t live here anymore.”
I winced. True or not, the words stung. “I could still help. We could sort through his things together.” Maybe I could save him—the things he’d touched and used and loved—from her.
