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Iknow that something is different the second I come home.
The garage door is open.
In the kitchen, there is a smell in the air, a woodsy scent like cologne.
I set my bag on the kitchen island and step out of my shoes. I take a sweeping glance of the room, calling for my mother. When she doesn’t answer, I take long strides toward the foyer to go check on her.
Just into the foyer, I see that Jake’s office door is open. It stops me dead. I draw in a breath. The door is not just slightly open, but entirely open, the frosted glass door flush against the wall. That door hasn’t been open in days. I’ve been keeping it intentionally closed because I kept finding myself looking in this week, expecting him to be there. He never was, but all it took was a lampshade in my peripheral vision, for example, to make me think that he was. My heart couldn’t take any more false alarms.
But now the door is open. Someone has opened it and my first thought is that Jake is home, that he’s finally come back home to me. I edge toward it. From the foyer, I don’t have a clear view of the inside yet, but there is a part of me expecting Jake to be sitting behind his desk, as if nothing is wrong, as if he hasn’t been gone all this time.
I take a breath and step into the room, but it’s completely empty. Jake isn’t here. I sag against the doorframe to catch my breath, feeling let down by the empty desk chair.
After a minute, I turn away from the office. There is something on the floor by the front door. I go to see what it is and find that it’s the extra key card to my Tesla, sitting by the floor register. It must have fallen from the mail sorter, which is where Jake and I keep it. I pick it up and put it back in the pocket of the mail sorter, wondering how it got on the floor and if my mother was looking for something while I was gone.
I reach for the banister. I pull myself toward the stairs. I climb the steps for the guest room, where my mother has been staying. The guest room doesn’t get much use because Jake’s family and mine live relatively close. When they come to visit, they come for the day, not for the night. Still, I went out of my way to decorate the space. It was wishful thinking, hoping that a beautiful room would bring guests, and it has brought some, old college friends mostly, but not as many as I imagined. For now I’m grateful I have a place for my mother to stay. The room is modern chic, but simple, with dark walls and white bedding and drapes.
I find her sitting in the armchair in the corner of the room with our cat curled up at the end of her bed. She’s looking out the window at the street. Her back is to me and she’s listening to an audiobook in her earbuds, which is why she didn’t hear me calling for her. She’s lost in the audiobook. She’s consumed with audiobooks these days because it’s practically all she can do now that she’s losing her vision. She can’t read a physical book, she can’t watch TV and she can’t drive. Because of what’s going on with her eyes, she’s no longer able to do what she wants to do when she wants to do it. She has to rely on me for everything. It’s so hard on her, who’s used to being independent.
“Mom,” I say and I go to her and set a hand on her shoulder. She turns, taking the earbuds out of her ears. My mother is only sixty-two. She’s relatively young, and it shows. Physically, she’s fit. She’s thin. She used to be a hiker and a backpacker when she was in her twenties. She met my father backpacking through Europe, long before they got married and had me. I forget sometimes that she had an entire life before I was born, when she was once young, adventurous and completely self-sufficient. She’s no longer self-sufficient but, even now, she could walk for miles and easily keep up with me. Her age is just starting to show in her face and neck, but her skin is mostly still free of lines, just some around the mouth and between the eyes. I’m envious. I hope that I look half as good as she does when I’m her age.
“Hi,” I say, smiling down.
“How was breakfast?” she asks.
“Good,” I say. “Did you get along okay while I was gone?”
“Yes,” she says.
“Did you nap?”
“A little.”
“What else did you do?” I ask.
She shrugs. “I took a shower,” she says.
“That’s all?” I wasn’t gone long, less than two hours. “Did you eat anything? Did you go downstairs?”
“Yes,” she says. “I made myself some oatmeal for breakfast.”
“Good,” I say, glad that she wasn’t shy about helping herself to breakfast. But that’s not really what I want to know. “Did you go for a walk?” I ask. “The garage door was open.”
My mother shakes her head, quiet. I don’t think I left the garage door open by mistake, but maybe.
“Did you go into Jake’s office while I was gone, Mom? That door was open too. I’ve been keeping it closed.”
My mother hesitates. She knows something but she’s reluctant to tell me. I tell her, “It’s okay if you did. It’s not like it’s off-limits. You can go anywhere in the house that you’d like. You know that. What’s ours is yours, Mom. I’m just curious, because the door was open and I’d left it closed.”
“I didn’t go into his office,” she says.
I frown. She had to have gone into his office while I was gone, but I don’t understand why she would lie to me about it. “Are you sure, Mom?” I ask. The office door was definitely open. I know for sure it was closed before I left. Fully closed. A person would have had to turn the handle to get in, so I can’t even blame the cat for it.
“Of course I’m sure,” my mother says, but again, she hesitates and I can tell she’s holding something back.
“What aren’t you telling me, Mom?”
She stands up from the chair. When she does, she rivals my height. “I didn’t want to tell you. I didn’t want to worry you. But when you were gone, Nina,” she says, reaching for my hand, “Jake came home.”
