AllFreeNovel
Share Us
SEVEN
Taryn
––––––––
Iwipe the back ofmy hand across my forehead. At least one good thing has come out of getting laid off—I’ve had a week to go through my mother’s things and start getting this house in order. My thought is to sell it, but Eric will need a place to live when he gets out of prison since I’d been tasked with selling his townhouse and putting the profits in his account. Maybe once he’s on his feet, he can buy out my half of this house or we can sell. Even though the house is small and not in the best neighborhood, it’s still got a good chunk of equity in it, and I’ll need that to buy my own place. That condo I’ve lived in since college is getting old and I’m tired of paying someone else’s mortgage when I could own.
I look around at all the boxes. I’m going to have to call one of those junk places to come get this crap. I’ve already thrown away so much stuff. Mom wasn’t a hoarder, per se, but she really did keep things she didn’t need. Magazines and other stuff that were completely obsolete. And the food containers.My God, Mother.It’s okay to not keep the lunchmeat containers after you are done with the lunchmeat.
I move to the bedroom and avert my eyes from the framed photo sitting on her nightstand. Me, her, and Eric at my graduation, all of us smiling so big, me proudly holding up my diploma I’d worked my ass off for. I head to the closet and pull down a plastic bin. After setting it on her bed, I open it up and find it full of photo albums. I lug out the first one and set it next to the bin. I immediately smile when I see the first page. Old, yellowed photos stuck behind crackled plastic. They are of her childhood, and as I flip the pages, she gets older and older until photos of her high school graduation appear on the last page. Her parents did a damn good job of documenting her life and keeping the precious photos for her.
I don’t realize I’m crying until a tear splashes on the plastic page. I use the hem of my old tee to quickly wipe it away. She was so beautiful... so full of life. But she didn’t take care of herself. Fifty-seven is way too young to go.
Next, I reach into the bin and pull out another album. This one is Eric’s. From his birth to high school. I set it aside and pull out the next, this one’s mine. I’ve looked through it before, but still, I flip the pages with a heavy chest and try to smile through my pain. When I get about halfway through, a photo stops me from flipping. Me, Eric, and none other than Carter Lockwood. I’m laughing in the photo as I hose off a soapy car from my junior high car wash fundraiser. I’d begged, pled, and bribed my brother and his best friend to wash cars topless, their toned bodies a big enticement to the cougars in their BMWs and Jags to come help out a poor school cheerleading team so we could buy new pom-poms and uniforms.
I gently run my thumb over the photo. Eric’s smiling, looking at Carter, but Carter’s looking straight into the camera, as my mother obviously snapped the photo as she sat as the chaperone to the car wash. He’s grinning, his arm up in a muscle man pose, his tongue out like he didn’t have a care in the world.
God, he was so hot. I remember seeing him that day, shirtless, and telling myself to stop drooling over him. He was in his twenties—so old to me—and I had no business finding him that attractive.
I smile sadly at the memory and flip the pages to find more photos of me in high school, a few of Eric and Carter here and there.
I close the album, put it back in the bin, and sigh with nostalgia.
An hour later, after I’d put all her clothes—except a few I was going to keep and wear—into boxes, along with all her shoes, I set the boxes outside the bedroom. I begin the task of going through her dresser drawers, shoving her undergarments into a trash bag to be thrown away, and all kinds of greeting cards from us and others she’d kept over the years. I skimmed through them, keeping ones that seemed personal and sentimental, and pitched the rest.
Why I keep any is beyond me. Guess I’m more like my mom than I thought.
Once the room is thoroughly cleaned out, I strip the bedding and toss it into the hallway for a wash before it goes into the donation pile. But, before I leave the room, I take that framed photo of us and put it into the plastic bin with the photo albums. That is definitely coming with me.
As I wander into the guestroom—my old bedroom—to start the task of cleaning that out, I feel and hear my phone buzzing and chiming from my back pocket. An unknown Denver area code number appears on the screen. Hopeful it’s a job lead, I eagerly answer it.
“Hello?”
Silence.
I check the connection. Yep, still connected.
“Hello?” I repeat, my hopes dwindling that it’s a job and thinking it’s a telemarketer making sure I was a human who answered the phone.
God, those robocalls are so fucking annoying.
With my thumb perched over the end call icon, I’m just about to press it when I hear, “Taryn?”
I quickly slam the phone back to my ear. “Speaking.”
“Hi. It’s Carter.” It sounds like he’s clearing his throat. “Carter Lockwood.”
My mouth opens and closes like a fish out of water. “Oh. Um. Hi.”
“Hi, Taryn. How are you?”
I chew the side of my lip as I carry the plastic bin into the living room and out to my little Audi I’d just bought. “I’m good. How are you?”
I cringe. How lame is that?
