Darcy’s resentment became official over pot roast one Sunday when she said, “Mom could stay with you for a while.”
“Visits are always welcome,” I said.
“Living here isn’t.”
“You have four bedrooms.”
“I do.”
“So what’s the problem?”
“I want to live alone.”
Darcy looked at me as though solitude were an expensive hobby I had chosen specifically to inconvenience her.
After that, she began referring to my Alaska cruise as “eleven grand on a boat.”
It had cost less than seven thousand.
I never corrected her.
Apparently all three of them remembered every no.
They simply waited until I crossed the Pacific Northwest before converting them into a yes.
I stayed on the ship.
I saw Glacier Bay.
I watched humpbacks surface far enough from the ship to look like punctuation marks on the water.
I ate dinner with a retired teacher from Arizona named Carol who had been widowed three years and understood why I occasionally went quiet mid-sentence.
Every evening I checked the camera.
Norine carried groceries inside.
A delivery driver brought boxes.
Keegan arrived with a lamp.
A piano tuner appeared.
By day seven, there was no question.
She wasn’t visiting.
She was moving in.
The ship returned beneath the Golden Gate on a Wednesday morning.
By evening, my shuttle dropped me at the end of my driveway.
I stood there with my suitcase.
The house was a brick ranch near Bidwell Park.
Leif and I bought it in 1991.
Paid it off in 2016.
I knew every creak in the hallway.
Every drawer that stuck in August.
Every window that whistled when winter wind came from the north.
I unlocked the door.
Tick.
Tick.
Tick.
That was the first sound.
The metronome.
It sat on top of the grand piano, brass arm swinging steadily.
The piano filled the space where Leif’s chair had been.
My coffee table was against the wall.
A wedding photograph of Leif and me had been laid facedown on a shelf.
Norine appeared from my guest room wearing a pink robe and holding one of my teacups.
“Hillary.”
She smiled.
“You’re early.”
I looked at her.
“I came home on the date printed on my ticket.”
She laughed as though I had made a joke.
“Darcy said you agreed.”
“Did she?”
I set my suitcase beside the door.
Twenty minutes later, headlights crossed the front window.
Grady came in first.
Darcy followed.
She had my ladybug key looped around one finger, spinning it.
“Before you start,” she said, “Mom’s condo has mold.”
I removed my coat slowly.
“Mold.”
“Black mold. Really serious.”
“Where?”
“Her condo.”
“In Yuba City.”
Darcy stared at me.
“Where else?”
“How long is remediation supposed to take?”
“Three months. Maybe four.”
Grady lifted both hands.
“Mom, it’s one bedroom.”
“No. The bedroom is one bedroom.”
I pointed toward the piano.
“That is my living room.”
He sighed.
“You’re never home anyway.”
The sentence entered the room and stayed there.
I had lived in that house thirty-four years.
I had been away eleven nights.
Darcy folded her arms.
“My mother was supposed to sleep on our couch? We have a six-year-old. Two bedrooms.”
Norine sipped tea.
I looked at my son.
He looked at the floor.
I could have shouted.
But after thirty-three years in housing law, I had never once seen volume move furniture.
“We’ll meet Friday,” I said.
“Everyone.”
Darcy smiled.
“Sure.”
At eleven that night, after the house went quiet, I went into the garage in slippers.
Leif’s chair sat beneath a blue tarp beside the mower.
The leather on the left arm was split.
Someone had hit the doorframe while moving it.
I pulled off the cover.
Then put my hand inside the little side pocket.
His reading glasses were still there.
One lens held the faint print of a thumb.
I sat down.
For twenty minutes, I stayed in my husband’s chair in a cold garage surrounded by garden tools and cardboard boxes.
I did not cry.