Chapter 2

661 words

“Dad left me a share,” Ryan finally said.

I looked at him, not understanding.

—No. Your father and I owned this house together.

—He changed some things before he died.

I felt as if the floor were tilting beneath my feet.

—What things?

Ryan looked up.

—There are documents.

Brooke crossed her arms.

—Lori, you are a single person living in a four-bedroom house.

-AND?

—We are going to start a family.

I waited for Ryan to say something. Anything that would put the world back together.

He didn’t.

—Mom, memories don’t pay the bills.

I remember those words with painful clarity.

Outside it was raining. The raindrops were hitting the windows and Robert’s old clock kept ticking the seconds above the fireplace.

Brooke let out a giggle.

—He has already depended on this family enough.

I turned towards her.

—Have I depended on you?

Ryan closed his eyes.

—Brooke…

—No. Someone has to say it.

Then he looked me straight in the eye.

—Robert spent his whole life carrying everyone, and now they expect Ryan to do the same.

Something cold pierced me.

—Don’t ever use my husband’s name again to justify kicking me out of my own home.

Ryan’s jaw tightened.

—One week, Mom.

I thought I had misheard.

-That?

—You have one week to find somewhere to go.

He looked towards the door.

—Then we’ll change the locks.

I stared at the child I had once carried to the emergency room at three in the morning when he was six years old and burning with fever.

I remembered the teenager who cried against my shoulder after wrecking his first car.

To the young man who danced with me on his wedding day.

But the man standing in front of me was a stranger with my son’s face.

—Ryan, if you do this, something between us is going to die.

Her eyes faltered.

For a moment I thought I had managed to reach him.

Then Brooke touched his arm.

And it hardened again.

—I’m sorry you see it that way.

I packed for six days.

Not because I accepted that they had the right to remove me, but because the pain from Robert’s death had left me exhausted in a way I hadn’t understood until then.

I kept photographs, clothes, Robert’s watch, my mother’s crockery, and a shoebox full of letters he had written to me when we were young.

I left furniture.

I left plates.

I left books with my name written on the first page.

On the afternoon of the seventh day, I closed the front door and stood on the porch under a gray Seattle sky.

Ryan did not appear.

Brooke, yes.

He was watching me from behind the living room curtain.

I raised a hand.

She dropped the curtain.

I called a taxi.

The place

The cheapest one I found was the Harbor Rest Motel, near an industrial area south of downtown.

There was no port.

And much less rest.

The room smelled of chlorine and stale cigarettes. The heater rattled all night, and the red VACANCY sign flickered on the ceiling.

That first night I sat on the edge of the bed with Robert’s watch in my hands.

“I did everything right,” I whispered.

For years I had built my life around that certainty.

He had been faithful.

Patient.

Careful.

Useful.

But that night I discovered that being needed was not the same as being loved.

At ten o’clock the next morning my cell phone rang.

—Mrs. Mercer?

-Yeah.

—My name is Evelyn Hart. I am a lawyer.

My first thought was Ryan.

—If this is about the house…

—It’s because of her husband.

I remained motionless.

—¿Robert?

There was a pause.

—Her husband left me instructions to contact her only under a very specific condition.

-Which?

—That you were no longer living in your marital home.

For several seconds the only thing I heard was the motel heater.

Then Evelyn said:

—Mrs. Mercer, Robert believed that one day your son might force you to leave.

I had to sit down.