“Tony—look after my ma? I’m going to spend time before I go but—I’m worried.”
“Always,” he says. “She won’t even suspect I’ll have eyes on the place.”
“I never took Sage there,” I admit.
“She was too smart to mess with a mother,” Tony says. “That’s a line you don’t cross.”
Then he grins. “Still getting her cameras. Fence. Guard dog.”
I laugh—really laugh.
Weeks pass.
Not days.
Not a rushed montage of decisions and packing boxes.
Weeks.
I don’t go back to Boston right away. I stay long enough to finish cleaning what can be cleaned, to let the house breathe again, even if it won’t be mine for much longer. I hire a property manager. Sign papers. Rent it out furnished. Let someone else make new memories in rooms that no longer feel like mine.
The condo comes later.
I take my time there too.
I box things carefully. Donate more than I keep. The watch goes into a drawer. The suits follow. I keep one—out of habit, maybe guilt—but it feels like a costume now.
At night, instead of drinking or calling people I don’t want to explain myself to, I write.
Not to a therapist.
To myself.
I buy a cheap black notebook and start putting things down the way they come—messy, nonlinear, honest. Some nights it’s Sage. Some nights it’s the house. Some nights it’s 9/11.
That surprises me.
I hadn’t realized how much this year pulled that thread loose again. How much I’d been running—not from her, but from that day. From the version of myself that came out of smoke and never really sat still again.
Maybe Sage wasn’t the earthquake.
Maybe she was just the last tremor before the ground finally gave way.
One night, sitting on the edge of the bed in the half-empty condo, it hits me so clearly I laugh out loud.
This is right.
As fucked up as the road here was, it brought me exactly where I’m supposed to be.
I’ve spent a decade chasing a life that looks good on paper.
Fancy watch.
Good suits.
Corporate meet-and-greets.
Kissing the right asses.
