Sara answered the door wearing a pair of Victoria’s Secret lounge pants and a baggy zip-up hoodie. The thick wrap of bandages she’d worn over the lumpectomy had been off for a few days, and she was moving her arms naturally, though she was still visibly favoring the right one.
She brushed the fingers of her left hand through his hair. “Look at that mop of yours. It still makes me blink to see you with something other than a buzz cut. It’s growing out nice.”
“Thanks.” He held up the bag of Chipotle. “Steak burrito, white rice, hold the beans. Just like you asked.”
She took the bag and pressed a light kiss against his cheek. “Come on in. I can’t tell you how badly I’ve been craving one of these, but today’s the first day I feel like I can stomach it. It’s too cold to sit on the deck and stare out into the back parking lot, and the kitchen is as drab as the inside of a paper bag. So, let’s sit on the couch and get crumbs on it to annoy William later. What do you say?”
Kurt chuckled softly. “Sounds all right with me.”
“We’ve got soda and Gatorade in the fridge. Milk too.”
“Water’s fine. I’ll get it. You sit down. What’ll you have?”
“A Coke, I guess. I’m sick of Gatorade—and chicken soup and mashed potatoes, which means I’m getting that anesthesia out of my system.”
He headed to the small kitchen and grabbed a soda and a glass of water, then joined her in the living room. The whole place was about seven hundred square feet, but it felt even smaller to him after having gotten used to the high ceilings at the Sabrina Raven estate. “How are you feeling? Ready to start radiation next week?”
She shrugged, her left shoulder rising higher than her right one. “Ready as I’ll ever be. We Crawfords jump in and don’t waste time thinking about it, don’t we?”
“I guess so.”
The TV was muted, but she’d been watching the Food Channel. A baking show was on, giving Kurt an immediate craving for cupcakes, something he hadn’t had in years. He unwrapped his burrito, also steak, though he hadn’t opted out of the beans.
She thanked him again for coming and moaned over how delicious her burrito was. After she’d eaten about a third of it, she sat the rest on the wrapper on the coffee table and scooted sideways, facing him and crossing her legs. “Did William have to twist your arm to get you away from that girlfriend and those dogs of yours?”
Kurt smiled through his mouthful of burrito. “He offered to finish digging a trench.”
Sara laughed and made an imaginary check mark in the air. “Score one for motherhood. Sara Crawford out-rates trench digging.”
“I’d have come anyway.”
“Yeah, well, when he left, I told him you needed to come today. Between now and never, if it went any longer, I’m pretty sure I’d choose never. For part of this, at least.”
Kurt swallowed hard. “What’s going on?” He set his burrito on the coffee table and twisted to face her. “I thought everything was on track.”
“I’m fine, if that’s what you’re thinking. At least, I’m right where a woman my age with stage zero breast cancer should be.”
“Then what’s going on?”
Sara pointed toward the kitchen. “There’s a cardboard box on the table. I’ll let you grab it.”
Kurt wasted no time retrieving the box. It was lighter than he’d expected. It was folded closed but not taped. “What’s in it?”
“Some closure for one thing, I hope. Who knows what’ll come of the rest.”
Kurt scooted his burrito toward his mother’s, then sat the box on the coffee table. “Sara, in case you’ve forgotten, I’m not much for surprises and even less for suspense.”
“Then open it.”
Clenching his jaw, Kurt pulled free one of the corners. He blinked at the contents. They were both familiar and foreign. There was a framed picture of the four of them: Nana, William, Sara, and him. He’d seen it before, but it had been years earlier. Kurt was maybe five, which put Sara at just over twenty. It had been taken at Epcot. They were standing in front of Spaceship Earth. It was the one perfectly normal, all-American thing they’d done together, though Kurt scarcely remembered any of the vacation. Nana looked radiant, Sara was posing as if her crush had been taking the picture, Kurt looked two steps away from a grandiose meltdown, and William was looking grimly at the camera.
Next to the picture frame was the sock monkey that Nana had stitched out of honest-to-God worn socks. It had been on Kurt’s bed next to his pillow every day until fourth grade when a buddy came over and made fun of it. There were also a few toy cars, including a classic Mustang that looked a lot like the one he was driving now, except that it was black. His grandmother’s favorite rosary was in there too.
“She’d want you to have it,” Sara said as he brushed his fingertips over it.
Kurt wasn’t sure he wanted the responsibility of keeping it safe, but he didn’t want to refuse it either. At the bottom of the box were a couple folders stuffed with paper and a handful of children’s books.
“Mostly that’s your schoolwork. It was fun to look through it. There’s a paper in there you wrote about dogs. You should read it later. Grab the top book though, will you?”
Kurt did. It was worn, and the cover was half torn off. The cover picture was a cartoon drawing of a beach and an old lady and a little boy. Memory rushed over him. Nana’s singsong voice tickled his ears. How many times had she read it to him?
“I remember stopping by their house for one thing or another after I moved out and hearing her read it to you at bedtime.
