I laugh, the two of us falling silent as we look at each other, the same energy from last night filling the air.
“See you at the lake trip?” she asks.
I nod. “Wouldn’t miss it.”
I close the door and wave before jogging quickly up the driveway and the porch steps to throw open the front door.
“Dad?” I call as I kick my sand-laden flip-flops off and cross the threshold. “You here? Is everything all right?”
“Em!” He pops his head out of the kitchen, like he’s been waiting for me to get back. I study his face, relieved to see he’s fine. Everything is fine. “Drop your stuff! I’ve got a surprise for you.”
I drop my backpack by the stairs like he said, placing the bear on top of it, but narrow my eyes at him, suspicious. “A surprise?” I ask, watching as he grabs his car keys off the entryway table. He opts for his nonwork boots instead of his work boots, the only difference being distinctly less mud, yet another weird sign. “You have off today?”
“Took the afternoon off,” he says, spinning the key ring around on his finger, like this is totally normal. He’s still in his white Smith & Tyler T-shirt, a smattering of dirt on his chest, but an enormous smile is plastered on his face. He tilts his head eagerly as he pushes open the screen door. “Come on. I’ve got something to show you.”
I frown and spin around to jog after him, jamming my feet back into my flip-flops as I go. All I want is a shower and a real nap, not in a truck bed, but I haven’t seen him with this much pep in his step in about a hundred years.
“Where are we going?” I ask as I slide into his truck, buckling my seat belt while he zips out onto the road, the truck engine revving.
“You’ll see!” he says, turning the radio up, Billy Joel crooning at us while we drive past the McMansions and the gas station and the highway entrance, straight into south Huckabee. I peer out at the sea of identical town houses, doors barely hanging on their hinges, torn screens in the windows.
I’m surprised when my dad flicks on his turn signal, pulling into a parking lot and driving past a row of yellow and blue town houses to park right in front of a row of white ones, wilting flowers and bushes lining the paths to each door.
He flashes me a big smile and swings open the truck door. “Ready to see our new place?”
“Wait,” I say, my insides turning to ice as I fumble for the handle, hopping out and following him toward a small house on the very end. “Our what?”
“Our new place!” he repeats, nodding toward the handwritten SOLD sign staked straight into the dying flower bed. “We move in two weeks.”
Sold. Not pending. Not for sale. Sold.
I feel the ground shift underneath me.
Stunned, I follow him inside. I try to register everything, but it’s like I’m underwater, a wave pulling me down and holding me there. Faded white carpet. The worn linoleum of the breakfast bar in the kitchen. A sliding door in the living room that falls off the track when he opens it.
I clutch the banister as he takes me up the narrow steps, trying to fight my way to the surface.
My room is to the left now instead of the right. The handle gold instead of silver. I walk across the hardwood and push through the door to see the walls are a bubblegum pink, the tiny space closing in around me as I gravitate to the window.
The view is… the parking lot: rows of cars and the communal Dumpsters in the corner, currently overflowing with trash.
Not a sunflower in sight besides the one on my arm.
My fingers find the windowsill, grabbing on to it as I hear the sound of my dad’s boots on the floor, walking toward me.
“We can paint this, of course,” he says. “White. Or beige. Or yellow, even. Whatever you want.”
I squeeze my eyes shut, trying to keep my shit together.
I think about this entire summer, boxes and boxes of my mom’s stuff thrown in his truck to donate, and now this. I thought we’d look at places together. The places I sent him. Places we decide on together. Places other than the town houses my mom’s family had been offshored to when their farm had been bought out from under them.
I thought he’d at least talk to me. I thought even when the offer came in that we’d have more time. It’s like he’s hit the fast-forward button on everything.
“It’ll be good, Em! You’ve got a bigger closet now, and you’ll be closer to school. It’s a new start,” he says, his hand landing on my shoulder.
A new start.
I push it away, whirling around to face him. “Are you kidding me? Please tell me you’re joking.” My voice cracks unexpectedly on the last syllable.
His eyes widen and he takes a step back, stunned. “I don’t—”
“I mean, I know we don’t ever talk about anything, but you didn’t think to talk to me about this? About any of this? What good is a bigger closet when all we’ve been doing this summer is getting rid of everything! All her stuff! Like she doesn’t mean anything anymore!” I say, my hands balling into fists.
“I thought you were… fine with all of this. You’ve been so happy this summer, I just thought—”
“Yeah! And you want to know why? Because of the list. Her list. The list you would barely talk to me about,” I shout. “I’m not fine with any of this, Dad. I don’t want a fresh start. I don’t want to move into a place so completely different from what she would have
