I swung open our gate and walked up the cracked sidewalk. The fence had gaps like broken teeth. The siding was peeling. The wishing well Dad had built years ago was rotting, shingles lying on the grass like leaves. My father’s talent for restoration had never included home improvement projects. But there were obvious signs of recent efforts to fix things up. The sagging gutters had been cleaned and reattached. The step at the bottom of the stairs, broken as long as I could remember, had been repaired.
My eyes welled. So did my heart.Oh, Daddy…
Maybe, with him gone, Mom and I would draw closer. Like Marilla Cuthbert and Anne after Matthew’s death in Green Gables. I could picture Mom bursting into impassioned sobs (okay, maybe not—even my imagination wasn’t that good). But we’d hug. I’d comfort her. And she would pat my hand and tell me that for all her harsh words and ways, she couldn’t imagine life without me.
Or something like that.
I took a deep breath and tugged on the front door, resisting the urge to knock. For once, it opened easily. “Hello?” Theliving room hadn’t changed in fifteen years. Same boring beige couch, same worn tan carpet, same scratched brown coffee table where Daanis and I had propped our feet to eat popcorn and watchGlee. “Mom? I’m…”Home? Back?“Here.”
“Close the door,” my mother’s voice commanded. “You’ll let the heat out.”
She appeared from the kitchen, solid and familiar in jeans and a sweatshirt, wiping her hands on a dish towel. Her hair was thick, like mine, and scraped into a bun. She’d let it go gray even before the pandemic made the color fashionable. I flung myself at her as if I were six years old again and she could make everything all right.
My mother’s arms closed around me. She smelled reassuringly of coffee and Dove soap. She patted my shoulder briefly, a double tap like a teenage boy congratulating a teammate, before she stepped back. “Where’s Joe?”
NotHow are you?Not evenHow was your trip?
“Um. He was at the ferry. He took my bag.”
“He said he would.”
So…he wasn’t just picking up windows? Huh.
I searched my mother’s face. A little puffy under the eyes, but otherwise the same as ever. “How are you doing, Mom?”
“All right.” She sniffed. “Well. Now you’re here, you might as well make yourself useful.”
I refused to feel hurt.Usefulwas very important to my mother. “Do you want to talk? Can I get you anything?”
She looked at me like I had two heads. “Neighbors have been by all day, dropping off food. You can help put it away.”
As if funeral potatoes and casseroles made with cream of mushroom soup and cornflakes could somehow alleviate ourgrief. But if my mom and I were going to bond, we had to start somewhere.
So while Mom peered under foil and wrote names on the bottoms of dishes, I tried to make room in the fridge and the freezer for all the Tupperware. If I squeezed that in there…and put this on top of that…A jar toppled to the floor.
My mother’s breath huffed. “Oh, for heaven’s sake, Anne. Let me do it.”
I moved meekly out of the way as she pulled everything out and started to reorganize the shelves.
“Anybody home?” called a man’s voice.
Mom’s face lightened. “Joe!”
“Did he just walk in here?” I wondered out loud.
She shot me a look as she hurried from the kitchen. “Why not? Door’s unlocked.”
Nobody locked their doors on Mackinac. Which wasn’t the point. Slowly, I trailed after her to the living room, where Mom was hugging Joe like the son she never had.
He glanced at me over her head. “Brought your bag.”
“Thanks.”
“You’re a good man, Joe,” my mother said. “I don’t know what I’d do without you.”
It was everything I wanted to hear. And she’d said it to Joe. I was absurdly jealous. “Yeah, I never could have managed that great big suitcase all by myself.”
“Annie.” One word—my name on my mother’s lips—and I was suddenly ten years old again.
