There are moments wheneverything stops.
A breath. A heartbeat.
Even when it feels like an ending, it isn’t. It’s not a beginning either. It’s something narrower, a precise point in time. It’s a transition, a reconfiguration. The space between one pulse and the next. The point where one part of your life collapses inward and converges with the one to come.
The next part of my life is coming faster than I’m prepared for.
I walk down the hall toward the kitchen, the air filled with the smell of cardboard and lemon cleaner, which means my mom has made her decision.
Boxes are stacked everywhere, some piled shoulder-high, turning the kitchen into a maze. It feels less like moving and more like fortifying. Like she’s building a barricade against the life she’s abandoning, giving her a greater chance of escape when she finally runs from it.
Leaning against the wall of the entryway, I watch her tape up a box on the counter, the tape shrieking in the otherwise quietroom. She presses her palm flat against the seam, then labels the side in neat black marker.Kitchen/Keep. As if there’s anything left she hasn’t already decided to take with her and packed away. Everything is so bare.
My entire childhood is either in boxes or out on the curb waiting to be picked up with the trash.
“I hope you didn’t pack my favorite mug.”
“You have six favorite mugs,” my mom says with a little grin.
“Yeah, but only one is myabsolutefavorite.”
She finally looks up from the box she just stacked on top of another, her grin growing with a spark in her eyes. “In the cabinet.”
I step into the kitchen, the tile cold against my bare feet. The room feels smaller, compressed by cardboard and memory. My dad used to stand right where I am now, leaning against the counter, drinking coffee that was always too hot and pretending not to listen when my mom and I argued.
He’s been dead three years. He died a few days after I turned nineteen.
I’m honestly surprised it took my mom this long to make a run for it.
“North Carolina,” she says, like she’s trying to convince herself it’s real.
Not only is she running from this place, but she’s moving clear across the country.
I open the cabinet above the empty spot where the coffee maker used to be and find my favorite mug exactly where it’s always been. It’s one my dad gave me several years ago—plain white withGENIUSin big black letters. It’s not something I ever would’ve bought for myself, but it’s always been a reminder that my dad was proud of me.
Picking it up, I wrap my fingers around it and bring it to my face as though I can feel the comforting warmth of nonexistentcoffee.
“You know you’ll need to start packing too.”
There’s sympathy in her voice, and I can feel her eyes on me. Placing the mug back in its spot, I turn to see her watching me expectantly, waiting for an answer to the question she asked me weeks ago, the one she hasn’t asked again since.
“You don’t have to come to North Carolina, but…” Her voice trails off as she gazes around the kitchen. Even with all the boxes, it feels too empty. “Well, a twenty-two-year-old IT tech wasn’t exactly in the real estate listing.”
“You mean ‘comes with one emotionally attached adult son and questionable wiring’ didn’t boost the property value?”
She gives me thelook. “Case.”
“‘Lightly haunted by a grown man with a laptop’ wasn’t a selling point?”
Her lips purse in that way it does when she’s trying not to laugh. “Case.”
“I could just live inside the walls. They’d barely notice me.”
Her composure breaks, and she laughs with a shake of her head. “On second thought, live in the walls. The new owners will just have to invest in some good pest control.”
I scoff. “Ouch.”
Her laughter fades, her smile falling into that familiar sad one she wears more often than she used to. “I’m going to miss you if you don’t come with me.”
