Chapter 7
Her breath caught.
“Mom, this is a huge decision. You can’t just make a decision like that without talking to your family.”
The irony of that sentence nearly made me laugh.
I stood very still.
“Jessica,” I said quietly, “when I had no water, no place to stay, and no idea how I was going to handle a crisis, I called you.”
“That’s different.”
“How?”
“You were asking me to fix something.”
“No. I was asking you to care.”
“Mom—”
“And you told me to figure it out myself.”
Her voice changed.
“Are you doing this because you’re angry?”
“No. I’m doing this because I listened.”
She was quiet.
Then she asked, “Where are you going to live?”
“I bought a condo.”
“You bought a condo?”
“Yes.”
“Where?”
“At Willow Lake Cottages. About an hour north of town.”
“An hour north?” Her voice rose. “Mom, that’s too far. What if something happens?”
I closed my eyes.
There it was.
Concern.
At last.
But it came too late.
“Well,” I said softly, “I guess I’ll have to figure it out myself.”
The silence that followed was deeper than before.
“Mom,” she whispered.
“I have a two-bedroom place overlooking the lake. It has a garden, a community center, transportation services, and people nearby if I need them.”
“You bought it without telling me?”
“Yes.”
“What about Dad’s workshop? What about the furniture? What about the things in the house?”
“I donated most of the tools to the vocational school.”
“You donated Dad’s tools?”
“They will be used.”
“Some of those tools were valuable.”
“Frank would have liked knowing young people were learning with them.”
“Mom, you should have talked to me.”
“Why?”
She did not answer.
“Why should I have talked to you?” I asked again. “So you could tell me what I should do with my own life? So you could decide what was practical for me? So you could remind me that I’m too old to make choices?”
“That’s not fair.”
“No, Jessica. It wasn’t fair when I called you from that motel room and you made me feel like I was an inconvenience.”
“I was stressed.”
“I was terrified.”
“I didn’t mean it that way.”
“But you said it that way.”
Her breathing was uneven now.
I could hear her trying not to cry.
For a moment, the mother in me wanted to soften.
I wanted to tell her it was okay.
I wanted to make the discomfort disappear.
That was what I had done my entire life.
I had smoothed over her mistakes.
I had excused her sharp words.
I had accepted half-hearted apologies because I was afraid of losing even more of her.
But I was tired.
Tired in a way sleep could not fix.
“You told me to make adult decisions,” I said. “So I did.”
“Can we talk about this tomorrow?”
“I’ll be busy tomorrow.”
“Mom.”
“Goodnight, Jessica.”
Then I ended the call.
The next morning, I wore my best navy suit.
Frank always said navy made me look distinguished.
I put on pearl earrings and a small gold necklace he had given me for our twentieth anniversary.
Then I drove to the attorney’s office.
The buyers were a young couple named David and Melissa Hart.
They had two little girls and a baby on the way.
David was a carpenter.
The first time he toured the house, he had stood in the garage with his hand on Frank’s workbench and tears in his eyes.
“This man knew what he was doing,” he had said.
“He did,” I told him.
Melissa had walked through the kitchen slowly, touching the old cabinet handles.
“We promise we’ll take care of it,” she said. “We know this house has been loved.”
That mattered to me more than I expected.
When we sat down at the closing table, there were stacks of papers, legal documents, pens, folders, and a bowl of mints no one touched.
My hands trembled slightly when I signed my name.
Carol Bennett.
Again.
May you like
Carol Bennett.
Again.
