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Chapter Three
Tatum
Standing at the entrance of the living room, I look around the space with a cup of coffee in my hand, memories flooding my mind. Mom’s house is a classic southern cottage and one of the basic criteria of the design is its homey feel but Mom took it a step further. The light teal blue walls are welcoming but not overbearing or too bright and she managed to find white couches that don’t feel sterile or untouchable. She coupled that with the wicker chairs that give it a coastal flair and two teal ottomans that are more like beanbags. Large windows allow the sunlight to flood the room and you can’t take a step without the old hardwood floors creaking but, for me, that’s always added to the charm of the place.
If I close my eyes, I can almost hear Mom moving around the kitchen, making dinner for Theo and me as a cool summer breeze blows through the house. Everything is exactly as she left it six days ago and it makes it so much harder to cope with the fact that she’s gone. But she is. Her ashes are currently floating around in the Gulf of Mexico right now, seeing the rest of the world like she always wanted to.
Theo comes bounding down the stairs behind me and I quickly wipe a stray tear away and sniffle as I raise my coffee mug to my lips. He steps into the living room from the archway in the kitchen and I glance in his direction as he sips his own coffee.
“What are we going to do with this place?”
He peeks over at me before glancing around the room and shrugging. “I don’t know. I suppose you could move in here.”
Theo and I were born in Denver but as soon as we were released from the hospital, Mama loaded us up and hit the road. We always stayed in cheap, roadside hotels and we never stayed longer than three months before she would pack us up again and move to some other part of the country. First it was Arizona, then Iowa, North Carolina, North Dakota, Maine, Texas… We’d visited almost every state in the country before we landed in Baton Rouge when Theo and I were six. I have no idea what changed for her here but she decided to finally put down some roots and this place has been my home ever since. There isn’t a single part of me that wants to lose it but I know I can’t afford to keep it.
“And take over her mortgage payment?” I ask, shaking my head as tears build in my eyes. “I can’t afford that, Theo.”
Compassion fills his eyes. “I’ll help you. I can send you money every month.”
“I can’t ask you to do that.”
Setting his coffee down on the table, he walks over to me and wraps me up in a hug. “You didn’t ask, I offered and I don’t want to lose this place either. This is our house, the only one we’ve ever had.”
Biting my bottom lip, I look up at him and mull it over. “Be honest with me. Can you really afford to send me money for the house?”
The moment of hesitation is all I need to see to know that as much as he wants to help, he’s not in a much better position than I am.
“We have to sell it,” I say before he can answer me and he shakes his head.
“Don’t be stubborn,” he growls. “This is our home.”
“We can’t afford it.”
“I’ll find a way, T. You need a better, safer place to live and Mom wouldn’t want us to lose the house.”
“Mom wouldn’t want us to kill ourselves to keep it, either.”
As he sighs again, I know that he’s on the same page as me. Neither one of us wants to lose it but there’s only so much we can do. Some things are just out of our control.
“If we’re going to sell it, we need to start sorting through her things,” Theo points out and I nod, gazing around the room.
“Where do we even start?”
He peeks over my shoulder to the storage closet in the hall. “There, I suppose.”
I let out a groan. The last time I peeked in that particular closet, I was almost buried under a mountain of boxes.
“Oh, goody.”
“Come on.” He laughs, slinging his arm over my shoulder. “Let’s finish our coffee and then we can get to work.”
We sit across from each other at the kitchen table and start sharing memories of Mom as we finish off our coffee.
“Do you remember that hotel in Kansas City?” Theo asks and I start laughing.
“With the guy that would shout movie lines all night long? I thought Mom was gonna tear him a new one.”
“For the love of God, it’s three in the morning,” Theo says, imitating Mom’s voice and I start laughing but they quickly turn to tears as I realize I’ll never hear that voice again.
