Page 13 of Broken Cedar

I find Mom in the living room. The coffee table has been pushed aside. She’s on the floor, cross-legged, surrounded by cardboard boxes, and she looks up when I come in.

“There you are,” she says. “Grab a box?”

I survey the carnage. “What is all this?”

“Life,” she says. “Jim was many wonderful things, but an organized record-keeper was not one of them.” She holds up a folder. “This is 2004’s tax returns. Mixed with, apparently, the manual for a chainsaw we don’t own and three different recipes for zucchini bread.”

I kneel beside her. The floor is hard under my knees as I pull the nearest box toward me and peer inside. More folders. Receipts. A stack of photographs bound with a rubber band.

“Where do I start?”

“Anywhere. Everywhere. The system is: keep, toss, maybe. If it’s a photograph, it’s keep. If it’s a bill from 1998, it’s toss. If you’re not sure, put it in maybe and we’ll argue about it later.”

We begin sorting. Each box yields its treasures: my childhood drawings, carefully labeled in Mom’s neat handwriting; Colt’s first blue ribbon from a local show; a letter from a neighbor thanking Jim for helping pull a calf in the middle of the night.

“You don’t have to leave tomorrow, do you?” she says.

The question lands between us like something dropped. Casual. Innocent. Loaded with implications I’m not sure she intends.

“I—” I start, and then stop. The rehearsed answer is right there, lined up and ready: meetings, deadlines, houseplants that need watering.

“Because I could really use the help,” she continues, and her voice is so matter-of-fact, so free of manipulation, that it somehow makes everything worse. “There’s more to sort through. The barn loft. The tack room. Jim’s office, which is its own special kind of disaster.” She smiles, a small, tired thing. “And it would be nice. Having you here. For more than just the memorial.”

The memorial. It feels like a lifetime ago, even though it was only yesterday.

“I have work,” I say weakly. The words feel thin in my mouth. “Meetings on Tuesday that my boss is now asking to move to tomorrow. My apartment—the plants, the mail—”

“I understand,” she says, cutting me off. “Of course, honey. I just thought it’d be nice.”

She turns her attention back to the box in front of her, and something in the set of her shoulders makes my chest ache.

“I could maybe…” I start, and stop again. “Let me talk to my boss and see what I can do.”

I stare down at the folder in my hands without really seeing it. I could take a couple more days of leave. In the city, people take longer vacations than that without the world ending.

Except this isn’t a vacation. It’s missed meetings. Clients shuffled onto someone else’s calendar. My assistant quietly fixing problems I created.

The version of me that exists in boardrooms and conference calls immediately starts making lists. Contingency plans. Things that could go wrong.

The version of me sitting on this living room floor…just wants one more morning. One more dinner. One more day pretending I never left.

Outside, a truck door closes. Mom hears it too. I watch her register the sound.

“Think about it,” she says softly. “No pressure. Just…think about it.”

I nod, unable to speak. The guilt is a physical thing now, sitting in my throat like a stone. Some of it belongs to Mom. Most of it belongs to me. Because somewhere between yesterday morning and now, I’ve stopped trying to leave. I’m only pretending I still plan to.

Colt’s footsteps reach the porch and the screen door whines open. Then he’s in the doorway, hat in his hand, one hip leaning against the doorframe.

“Got the tables returned,” he says.

“Thank you, honey,” Mom says, her eyes moving between us. “Hallie and I were just talking about her stay, and whether she can stay for longer.”

Colt’s expression doesn’t change, but something shifts behind his eyes. I look away before my face gives us away.

“The creek flooded last spring,” Colt says. “Big one. Washed out the bank near the swimming hole. We rebuilt it. It’s deeper now. Better.”

The swimming hole. Our swimming hole. The place where summer afternoons stretched into eternity. It would be nice to see it again. There are so many places on this property that I would love to see again.