“I’m keeping my old baseball glove,” Christopher said, holding it up. “You never know if we’ll have a boy in the future.”
“Hey, who says Ellie won't want to play baseball?” Becca asked.
Christopher laughed. “Pardon me. Of course she can play. I bet she'll be as good as I was. After all, I'll teach her.”
The glove was too small for Christopher's hands now, designed for a boy who no longer existed except in photographs and memories. But he held it carefully, reverently, as if it were something precious.
“You slept with that glove for a month after you got it,” Maggie said. “You wanted to break it in. You read somewhere that sleeping with it would help.”
“Did it work?”
“I don't know. But you believed it did, and that's what mattered.”
Christopher turned the glove over, examining the stitching, the creases, the small tear near the thumb that had been repaired with dental floss because he refused to let anyone throw it away. He had been a serious child, Maggie remembered. Focused and determined, always working toward some goal only he could see.
“I was so desperate to make him proud,” Christopher said quietly. “Everything I did, every sport I played, every grade I earned, it was all about getting his approval.”
“I know.”
Maggie thought about Daniel, about the way he had watched their children with a mixture of love and expectation that often felt indistinguishable from criticism.
“He was proud of you,” she said finally. “In his own way, which wasn't always the right way. He didn't know how to showit without also showing you what he thought you could do better.”
“That's a generous interpretation.”
“Maybe. But it's also true.” Maggie put her hand on Christopher's arm. “You don't have to carry his expectations anymore. You haven't had to for a long time. The man you've become, the husband you are to Becca, the father you are to Eloise, that's all you. None of that was about making him proud.”
Christopher was quiet for a moment, looking at the glove. Then he set it in the box gently and reached for the roll of stickers on the nightstand. He peeled off a red one and pressed it to the box.
“Some things are worth keeping,” he said. “Even when the memories are complicated.”
Becca emerged from the closet with an armful of varsity jackets. “Speaking of complicated, did you really need three letterman jackets?”
“I lettered in three sports.”
“Of course you did.”
Maggie left them to their sorting and continued down the hall. She could hear Chelsea in the attic, her footsteps creaking overhead, probably taking photographs of everything before it was disturbed. Chelsea had always been a documenter, capturing moments for posterity, understanding instinctively that memory was fragile and photographs were one way to hold on to what time tried to take.
In Beth's old room, Maggie paused. The walls were still painted the soft lavender that Beth had chosen when she was thirteen, convinced it was the most sophisticated color in existence. The furniture had been rearranged over the years as various family members used the room, but the bones of it were the same. The window seat where Beth had curled up with books for hours at a time.
Maggie sat down on the window seat and looked out at thebackyard. From here, she could see the old swing set, rusted now and listing slightly to one side. She could see the garden beds, dormant and brown. She could see the corner where the woodchuck had made its home, where she had stood just this morning saying goodbye to the woman she used to be.
She pulled out her phone and dialed Beth's number.
On the screen, Beth looked up from the laptop feed. “Mom? Is everything okay?”
“Everything's fine. I just wanted to talk to you. Just us, for a minute.”
Beth shifted on the bed, careful not to wake the baby on her chest. Emily stood quietly and slipped out of frame, giving them privacy.
“I'm in your room,” Maggie said. “Sitting on the window seat.”
“I used to love that window seat. I'd sit there for hours, watching the seasons change. Spring was always my favorite. When the trees started budding and everything came back to life.”
“You wrote poems about it. Do you remember? Little verses about springtime and hope and new beginnings.”
“I was twelve. Everything felt profound when I was twelve.”
