I remembered building that fence with my father, remembered how he made me tamp every post myself, never mind if my arms gave out or my hands blistered and bled. He’d say, “You take shortcuts, you get a crooked fence, and you only have yourself to blame.” I’d hated him for it at the time. Now I hated that the lesson had stuck.
The house looked the same as it always had, except for the air of neglect around it. It was a plain white two-story with atin roof, the kind that baked you in the summer and froze you solid come January. The porch sagged enough that I could see where last year’s snowmelt had pooled against the steps and warped the boards. My mother used to keep flower boxes under every window—pansies and petunias and the occasional spiky ornamental grass—but now they were mostly empty, dirt packed down hard with only a few stubborn shoots fighting through the crust.
I circled the house, not sure what I was looking for. Maybe proof that there was still some life here. I checked the barn, found it empty except for a stack of brittle hay bales and a few broken tools. I ran my hand along the barn wall, feeling the grooves and knots in the wood, remembering how I used to sneak out here at night and watch storms roll over the hills, lightning lighting up the world like the end of days.
When I finally went back to the front door, my hands were shaking from the pain of it all.
I figured it was unlocked, but I knocked anyway, out of habit. No one answered.
The smell hit me again as soon as I stepped inside. Not just dust, but the sharper chemical tang of bleach and alcohol and something else I couldn’t name, something faintly sweet and rotten, like flowers left too long in a vase.
The television was on, set to a low volume. A weather channel showed off storm systems heading this way. I remembered my mom watching the weather every day, even though the sky outside told you everything you needed to know. Now the TV was just background noise, a stand-in for company.
They’d moved a hospital bed into the living room, pushing the coffee table and chairs off to the side. The bed was cranked up, and the blue blanket was tucked in so tight it looked like it was trying to pin its occupant to the mattress.
My mother lay there, eyes closed, face turned to the window. She looked smaller than the last time I’d seen her, almost weightless, like she might drift off if someone opened the window. Her hair was even paler than the previous week, and there was a spot on her cheek where the skin was so thin I could see the blue vein underneath. Her hands rested on top of the blanket, fingers curled inwards, nails short and unpolished.
I stood in the doorway, watching her breathe, not sure if I wanted her to wake up or not.
After a few minutes, her eyelids fluttered and she turned her head in my direction.
“Morning, Mom,” I said, forcing my voice to sound easy. “You look good.”
She smiled, the effort making the skin around her mouth bunch up like crumpled tissue paper. “Liar,” she whispered. Her voice was barely there, but it had a humor in it that made me want to sit down and cry.
I pulled a folding chair from the stack in the corner and set it up by her bed. I sat so close my knees bumped the metal frame.
She reached out a hand and found mine, her skin cool and dry. She squeezed, and I squeezed back.
“Couldn’t sleep much last night,” she said. “Your father snores like a chainsaw. Could hear him all the way down here.”
I huffed a laugh. “Some things don’t change.”
We sat for a while, neither of us saying anything. The air was thick with everything I didn’t want to talk about.
She was the one to break the silence. “You see the fence?”
“Yeah.”
“You fix it?”
I shook my head. “Not yet.”
She made a face like she was disappointed, but I could tell she didn’t mean it. “It’ll hold. For now.”
I nodded, not trusting myself to speak.
She let go of my hand and brushed at a spot on the blanket, her fingers trembling. “I’m glad you’re here,” she said. “I was worried you wouldn’t come.”
“I said I would.”
She looked at me with eyes that were still sharp, even if the rest of her wasn’t. “I know you did. But you hate it here.”
It wasn’t a question, so I didn’t answer.
She studied my face, searching for something. “Your father’s out back,” she said, finally. “He pretends he’s still running the ranch. Pretends I’m just tired, or lazy, or stubborn.” Her mouth twisted into a smile.
“He won’t come inside until dinner. You have time.”
