I had an empty house and at least an hour until Mom got home. I went into my room to write. Sweeping all the stuffed animals off the bed, I settled against the pillows with my laptop. Only…they looked so sad there, lying face down on the floor. I hopped up again, kissing a few fuzzy faces in apology, and rearranged them all in rows along my bookshelves. Flung myself back on the bed.
Where to begin?
Tentatively, I opened a folder. There was…Wow, there was a lot. Stories I’d worked on in college. Stories I’d started during the pandemic. Outlines, notes, fragments of ideas, and bits of description. The quiet pressed down on me. I dipped into a file and started reading.
Who named a character Cordelia? Obviously, I did, in my Anne Shirley phase. It was probably a placeholder. I could come up with something better now. I went to the Social Security Administration website, searching for names by state and date of birth.Emily, Ashley, Jasmine, Grace…I looked up their meanings on a baby planning site. Did Daanis have a name picked out for the new baby? I should have asked. Mythroat squeezed. I should have asked her a lot of things, instead of making assumptions.
My stuffies looked down on me with black button eyes. I felt cramped, constrained, thrust back to the months during the pandemic when nothing I wrote seemed important. I needed a space without distractions. Room to breathe, freedom to make a mess. Like my dad, retreating to the shed behind the house to saw, sand, and stain while I sat and chattered away.
I’d had plenty to say back then.
The shed.
Energized, I scrambled off the bed, bolted out of the house and across the strip of grass. I dug the key from its hiding place under a rock and unlocked the door. My heart beat in my throat. I flipped on the shop lights, holding my breath, waiting for my father’s encouraging spirit to wrap around me.
The space sprang into blocks of light and shadow, emptier than I remembered. Dad’s projects tended to accumulate. A birdhouse, a dining room chair, a pile of—spindles?—stacked like an abandoned Jenga game. Wood shavings, tools, and bottles of wood glue cluttered the counters.
There were obvious attempts at cleaning up. Utility buckets filled with wood scraps stood on the floor. The floor had been swept, the lumber stacked neatly against the walls. Major pieces—my father’s table saw and lathe, the bench top with my name carved into one leg—were gone.
Grief caught my chest. My father’s absence echoed under the hum of the shop lights.
I surveyed the shelves crammed with cans, the orange bins of bits and bobs, the mysterious metal objects hanging on the wall. I didn’t know where things went or what theywere for or if my mother wanted to keep them. Sell them. But the space had…potential.
I felt a buzz of energy along my nerves. Pulling up the Ultimate Cleaning Playlist on my phone, I got to work.
—
“What on earthare you doing?”
I straightened, wiping sweat from my forehead with the back of my wrist. My mother stood in the open workshop door, the shadows in the yard lengthening behind her.
I beamed. “Cleaning. Virginia Woolf says every writer needs a room of her own. Like Jo March, scribbling in her garret with her apples and her rat. Only without the rats. I hope.”
“You have a room.”
“An office. I need a place to work.”
“An office,” Mom repeated.
I was suddenly aware of how it must look. I’d emptied shelves and pulled out drawers, trying to sort things into categories. Hand tools, power tools, and little heaps of fasteners covered every available work surface. Clamps, cords, and cans of paint and varnish were piled on the floor. Sawdust floated in the air.
I fumbled with the volume on my phone, cutting off Billie Eilish thumping along to “Bad Guy.” “It will look better when I’m done.”
A spasm crossed my mother’s face almost like a smile. “It looked better before you started. You couldn’t wait until after dinner?”
Dinner.Fudgsicles.“What time is it? I made…I need to take out the chicken!”
“Too late,” Mom said.
I winced. “I’m sorry. I got distracted.”
Hailey’s voice replayed in my head. “I’m not irresponsible. I’m not stupid. I was busy. I forgot.”
So much for demonstrating my adulting skills.
“Plenty of casseroles left in the freezer,” my mother said. From when my father died. She took a step forward, looking around. “You’ll need help getting your desk in here. It’s too much for you to move by yourself.”
It’s too much for you.It sounded like a metaphor for my life. And yet…“You’re not mad?” I asked.
