But as I go through each room, I still find things. The marks on the carpet where something used to be, tiny holes in the wall where pictures were hung, the lines on the doorframe where we’d measure my height every year.
The small scorch mark revealed from lifting up the carpet in the living room, a reminder of the Christmas a decade ago with Blake.
All signs we were here. All of us.
Soon my dad and I are standing in the entryway, our only claim to this house the memories we made in it.
He puts his arm around my shoulder, letting out a long exhale. “I’m gonna miss this place,” he says.
I nod, taking in the steps and the living room and the worn wood floors for the last time. Taking in Mom’s house for the last time, before, together, we close and lock the door.
My fingers drag along the flowers of the garden as we make our way down the walk. I stop to carefully uproot a sunflower to replant, although with my tattoo, I’ll always have a part of her garden with me, no matter where I may go. I smile as the tattoo peeks out from underneath my mom’s black cardigan, pulling the sleeve down as my dad appears over my shoulder with a mug from his truck for me to put the flower in.
My mom’s polka-dot mug. Not gone forever, but here.
We pull out of the driveway for the last time, the house fading from view as we drive off down the street, the mug clutched in my hands, everything I need from the house right here with me. All the important stuff.
Every step I take is a step toward a new, uncertain chapter in my life, something about a fresh start feeling good. Inviting. A new beginning waiting just around the corner.
After we unload the moving truck at our new house, I climb the steps to my room, surprised when I step inside and see that the bubblegum-pink walls are gone, replaced with the same eggshell white as my old room, a blank slate for me to fill with posters and pictures of cake designs and handwritten recipes.
Dad.
There’s a light knock on the door, and I look over to see Johnny peeking inside. He gives me a small smile, the wrinkles around his eyes crinkling.
“I’m gonna head out, but”—he holds up a wrapped, rectangular object, about the size of a textbook—“she wanted me to give this to you.”
My heart jumps at the thought of Blake. I reach out and take it, my fingers wrapping around the solid edges.
Clearing his throat, he runs his fingers through his hair in a way that is painfully familiar. “I know something happened between the two of you. I don’t exactly know the specifics, Clark, but I sure hope you two find a way through it.” He smiles at me before patting my shoulder and leaving.
Slowly, I sit down on my bare mattress and carefully slide my fingers through the tape on the gift. The wrapping paper falls away to reveal…
A painting. Of my old house. The white exterior and the sash windows and the front porch with a swing, and… colorful sunflowers growing in the garden just underneath it, and…
My mom on the front lawn, gardening.
The most important part of the home, the exact memory I want to remember it by brought to life by Blake.
Of course she knew.
My thumb traces her name scrawled onto the right corner, tears stinging my eyes. I sniff, wiping them away.
It’s perfect.
That night I carefully hang Blake’s painting on my eggshell-white wall. It feels impossible for everything to ever be like it was between us. But this feels like a start.
“That’s an awful nice painting,” a voice says from behind me. I turn around to see my dad leaning in the doorway, a big wooden box tucked under his arm.
“It sure is,” I say, plunking down on my bed and wrapping my mom’s cardigan around myself.
He slides down next to me, putting the box in between us. I nod to it, raising my eyebrows. “What’s that?”
He motions for me to open it, and I crack the lid to see a pile of odds and ends. Sort of like a junk drawer.
But when I look closer, I realize what it all means. A baseball he caught for my mom at a Phillies game, the necklace he bought for their first anniversary, an ultrasound of me as an amorphous blob.
And for the first time in three years, he talks about her, telling me stories as he tours me around the box, the both of us smiling and laughing, tears stinging at our eyes.
Things I don’t even know about, like a receipt from the French restaurant all the way in the city where my dad proposed to her and a piece of notebook paper with a ton of tick marks that they’d used to count the weeks she was pregnant.
It’s such a random and wonderful assortment of stuff. Stuff that holds so many memories of her that I didn’t have before, just like the list did. Memories of my mom and pieces of her that aren’t gone, even beyond the list. That I still have yet to find.
And he kept them.
“It’s nice to talk about her,” I say quietly as I look down at the baseball.
“I’m sorry,” my dad says, rubbing the back of his neck. “I’m sorry for how much I’ve failed you these past few years. Not talking about her. Keeping all this in a box. I mean, we’ve never been… great… at the whole talking thing. That was always you and your mom’s thing. It was hard for me, but… it still wasn’t right.”
“From now on, we’ll do a better job of that,” I say, smiling up at him.
He pulls out an envelope from the box, and I watch as he wipes at his eyes with the back of his
