“Get out of my house!”
Jessica’s shout hit me before I had even finished pulling my suitcase through the front doorway.
For several seconds, I could only stand there and stare.
I was seventy-two years old.
I had been traveling since six that morning, my knees hurt from the flight, and one wheel on my suitcase had begun squealing somewhere between baggage claim and the taxi line.
None of that, however, explained why my daughter-in-law was standing in the hallway of my own home, pointing toward the open door as though I were an intruder who had wandered in from the street.
Behind her stood my son.
Matthew.
Forty-six years old.
Six feet tall.
Brown eyes exactly like his father’s.
And he said absolutely nothing.
“Jessica,” I said carefully, “what did you just say?”
Her cheeks reddened, but she did not step aside.
“I said you can’t just barge in here.”
For one ridiculous instant, I wondered whether I had somehow entered the wrong house.
Then my eyes went to the brass numbers beside the door.
My address.
The address where George and I had lived for thirty-eight years.
The house where Matthew had learned to ride his first bicycle.
Where he had broken his wrist jumping from the maple tree.
Where George had carried him upstairs after his appendix surgery when he was eleven.
Where birthdays, graduations, anniversaries, and thirty-seven Christmas mornings had unfolded.
The same red-brick house whose mortgage I had finished paying twelve years earlier.
I looked at Jessica again.
“Barge in?”
My hand tightened around the suitcase handle.
“I live here.”
Matthew finally shifted.
“Mom.”
Only one word.
Yet something in his voice unsettled me more than Jessica’s yelling had.
It did not sound like surprise.
It did not sound like relief.
It sounded like the voice of someone whose plan had been interrupted.
I stepped farther inside.
That was when I noticed the Christmas lights.
For almost forty years, George and I had decorated with colored lights—red, blue, green, gold.
Every December George complained that half the strands were broken, and every December he still spent hours on the ladder putting them up.
Now perfect white lights ran along the staircase.
Even.
Elegant.
Cold.
Beyond the hallway stood the Christmas tree.
Silver ornaments.
White ribbon.
Glass icicles.
It looked less like our family Christmas tree and more like something arranged for a hotel lobby.
My paper angels were gone.
My mother’s glass bell was missing.
The knitted stocking Louise made when Matthew was born had disappeared.
And the crooked wooden star George carved for our first Christmas together no longer sat on top.
I stared at the tree.
“Where are my decorations?”
Jessica crossed her arms.
“In the garage.”
“Why?”
She shrugged slightly.
“Too much clutter.”
I turned toward her very slowly.
Then my gaze landed on the wall hook by the staircase.
Empty.
My breathing changed.
George’s brown corduroy jacket had remained there for four years.
I knew how foolish that might sound.
He had been gone for four years.
Cancer had taken him eleven months after his diagnosis, and logically there had been no reason to leave his jacket hanging there.
But sometimes when I passed it, I touched the sleeve.
Sometimes, if I pressed the collar close enough to my face, I thought I could still smell his cedar aftershave.
It was sentimental.
Perhaps ridiculous.
But it was mine.
Now Matthew’s heavy winter coat occupied the hook.
Jessica’s pink wool coat hung beside it.
Below them were shoes, shopping bags, cardboard cartons.
Far too many cartons.
I looked toward the dining room.
More boxes were stacked there.
A laptop rested on George’s old writing desk.
Jessica’s purse sat on my kitchen counter.
Mail addressed to Matthew lay beside the fruit bowl.
I turned to my son.
“Why is your stuff here?”
Jessica answered for him.
“Because we moved.”
I looked at her.
Then at Matthew.
Then back at her again.
“You moved?”
“Our lease ended.”
“When?”
“Last week.”
I waited for more.
Nothing came.
My voice lowered.
“You didn’t call me.”
Matthew rubbed the back of his neck.
“We meant to.”
“You didn’t ask me.”
“We were going to talk about it.”
“When?”
“When you came back.”
I stared at him.
“I am back.”
Jessica sighed as if I were the one being unreasonable.
“Ellie, it doesn’t make financial sense for us to keep throwing money away on rent when there’s a perfectly good house sitting here.”
“Sitting here?”
“You were gone.”
“I was helping Louise after her surgery.”
“You were gone for two weeks.”
“Fourteen days.”
“That’s what I said.”
I looked at my son.
He refused to meet my eyes.
A cold feeling settled in my stomach.
I had been away for fourteen days.
Fourteen days.
Not fourteen months.
Not fourteen years.
