Chapter 7
My mother visited often.
At first, every conversation felt cautious. She didn't want to pressure me. I didn't want to admit how much I needed her. We circled each other politely until one Sunday when she arrived with lasagna and discovered Mara trying to assemble a secondhand bassinet without instructions.
“What have you done?” Mom asked.
“Built furniture.”
Mom stared at the structure. “That appears to be a laundry rack.”
“It is transitional.”
“To what?”
“Furniture.”
I sat on the couch and watched them argue over screws. Something inside me softened. Not healed. Healing was too simple a word. But softened.
Later that afternoon, Mom asked if I wanted to come to her house the following weekend.
“There's something I want to show you.”
“What?”
“Your father's things.”
I frowned. Dad had died four years earlier after a brief illness. Most of his belongings had been sorted long ago.
“What things?”
“A box I didn't know existed until recently.”
Mara looked up. “You found another Dad box?”
Mom nodded. After his death, we discovered that Dad saved everything. Receipts from restaurants that no longer existed. Birthday cards from people we couldn't remember. Our elementary school report cards. A parking ticket from 1994 with a handwritten note claiming the meter had been “morally defective.”
“What was in it?” I asked.
“Letters.”
“From Dad?”
“Some.”
Mom seemed uncomfortable. That made me curious.
“And the others?”
She hesitated. “Come next weekend.”
The yellow house looked smaller than I remembered. Pregnancy made stairs harder now, so Mom had prepared the downstairs guest room in case I needed to rest. She pretended she had done nothing special. The new sheets, pregnancy pillow, ginger tea, and basket of snacks suggested otherwise.
May you like
Mara arrived twenty minutes after me carrying pastries. We gathered at the dining room table where we had eaten thousands of family meals.
Mom placed an old cardboard box between us. DAD - OFFICE was written across the top. Inside were envelopes tied with a shoelace. Photographs. A notebook. A small wooden frame.
