“A rough time for that.”
“Wasn’t COVID. She had a stroke and hit her head. They said it was probably real fast. But there were travel restrictions and everything was shut down. I didn’t come back when I heard. I was sheltering with a friend with an elderly father, and there wasn’t anything I could do for Mom at that point.” I realized I was justifying my decisions, my choices, to Lee the same way I had to myself so often over the years. “I did things remotely, had her cremated. Had a mover come and pack up her whole apartment and put it into storage, and, um.” I shuffled my feet against the carpet. “I had her urn with the ashes put in there, with her things. I said when life settled down, I’d come deal with that. But when I did, well, everything turned to shit.”
“I’m so sorry.”
I ran a hand over my face. “I was on my way to the storage facility when I hit Linda Bellingham. And then, even when theworst of the trial was over, I couldn’t make myself go deal with Mom.”
“You’ll be here another what, two years almost?” Lee managed not to sound judgmental. “You have time.”
“I’ve had lots of time. I’m just procrastinating.” I squared my shoulders, jerked up my chin. “I’ll go on Saturday. You can hold me to that.”
“I can do better,” he suggested. “I’ll come with you, if you like.”
Really?I closed my eyes in relief at the thought of not having to do that alone. Except. “I can’t ask you to give up one of your days off to pick through old furniture.”
“You didn’t ask, doofus. I offered. Only if it would help.”
“So much,” I told him. “Are you sure?”
“Positive. When?”
“You’re doing me the favor. You decide.”
“Pick you up at nine a.m.?”
“Perfect,” I told him. For most of my life, nine a.m. had been the break of dawn, given the night-owl lifestyle of a performing musician, but now I was used to normal hours. “Thank you. And, oh, you might want to wear older clothes. At the very least, there’ll be four years of dust on everything.”
“I can handle a little dust.” Lee peered closely at me. “You good now?”
“Fine, thanks to you. I’ll see you Saturday. Well, I’ll probably see you here tomorrow, right? But then Saturday.”
Lee grinned and hurried off down the hallway, leaving me feeling like a fool but also lighter at heart than I’d been in a long, long time.
***
“So.” Lee stood beside me, eying the jam-packed storage behind the door I’d just rolled up. “Where do you want to start?”
By closing it back up again and running away?I took a steadying breath. “Finding Mom’s ashes, I guess. I don’t want to, like, pull out a table and drop her unexpectedly.”
“What does the urn look like?”
“A ceramic thing in pink marbled enamel.” Not my tastes at all, but I’d figured Mom had to live in it for eternity, so she should like it. Since I’d be the one looking at the outside, my logic had perhaps been scrambled. “I don’t really know how big it is.”
“Should be easy to recognize. Unless your mom kept pink marbled ceramics sitting around her house?”
“I wouldn’t put it past her,” I muttered. Mom loved knick-knacks of all kinds. Somewhere there’d be a giant case of Precious Moments figurines and an even bigger one of glass.
“Shall I start on the left and you start on the right?” Lee gestured.
“Sure.” I stepped forward. As I reached the compartment where a kitchen chair stood on top of the hallway end table with a cardboard box underneath, I stopped dead. A faint waft of rose potpourri combined with a musky perfume and stale dust hit my nose. So familiar. Mom’s place had always had that scent. It was both a comforting part of my childhood and the smell of Mom’sexpectations, of trying to please someone who could never quite be pleased.
“Crap.” I braced my hand on the end table, seeing my fingers leave smears in the dust. I wrote my name, then a star, watching the dust float in the air, the polished wood revealed.
“You okay?” Lee paused and turned toward me.
“Fine. I just didn’t expect things to be so familiar. Mom didn’t want me to go on that first tour with HeartTrap either. She thought I was a fool to pin my hopes on making a success in music. After all, I was already thirty-six and over the musical hill. I’d never made it out of Iowa for more than a festival here and there. I was clearly not star material. We said things.” I’d yelled at Mom, tearing her to shreds up and down, taking out the pain of losing Lee on her. He had a right to put me second to his family, but she was supposed to be my family.
“Well, she was wrong.”
