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ChapterOne
Present Day
Jo walked up the stairs toward the set of bedrooms on the upper floor of her home. She popped her head into the first room, which had been her daughter’s before she’d finally moved out just over six months ago. Satisfied that nothing was left out, she bypassed the other bedroom across from it and instead went to the guest room beside it to ensure that, like her daughter’s room, nothing had been left out.
She made her way to the master bedroom at the end of the hall. She paused with her hand on the doorknob for a good minute before turning it and entering the space. The room was empty, stripped of all the things that had made it a safe haven up until one year ago. She quickly walked toward the en-suite bathroom to make sure she had removed all her toiletries and products from off the counters and her pills from the medicine cabinet.
Sucking in a deep breath, then releasing it, she made a hasty retreat from the room and headed for the stairs at the opposite end. As if an invisible force had stopped her descent, she turned back to the only room she had not entered, her son’s bedroom. Josephine held the doorknob, but she did not turn it. Her knuckles turned white from how tightly she held on. Her head dropped until her forehead rested against the hard wood of the door. Finally getting the courage, she opened the door and quickly scanned the room without entering before pulling it shut. Her heart beat erratically against her ribcage. She made her way down the stairs and went into the kitchen to grab her sports bottle, the only one out, and filled it with water. After gulping down most of the liquid, she made her way to the family room to finish.
After what seemed like forever, Jo sighed heavily as she stepped back from the last box she had just packed and taped. The movers would be coming soon to put the things she wouldn’t be taking with her to storage.
She ran her fingers over the now bare walls of the family room. These walls once held frames that displayed the family portraits and created the perfect backdrop behind the gray five-piece sectional sofa that took up a considerable amount of space. The large flat-screen television hung on the opposite wall above the mahogany entertainment unit with the protruding brick-themed fireplace on the wall adjacent. This room held so many memories. Her mind shifted to a happy one, and a small smile graced her lips.
The whole family had sat on the couch, so close that they were all touching in some way, their eyes glued to the television. A large bowl of popcorn and glasses of juice lay on the coffee table before them. Charles had his hand over Jo’s shoulder, his fingers gently caressing her upper arm. Tracy had her head in her mother’s lap while Nicholas’s head rested on his sister’s side. It was such a rarity to see them so close without being at each other’s throats. Jo ran her hand through Nicholas’s short, curly brunette hair. Content was the best word she could find to express how she felt at that moment.
Just like that, her nostalgia became too much to bear, and she couldn’t stay in the room anymore. It was now a room like the many others that reminded her of the pain— the loss she had to endure. The loss she’d been holding on to.
As she walked through the other rooms of the house, she’d called home for more than eighteen years. She couldn’t help the tears that welled up in her eyes as her memories of what was and would no longer be, took preeminence over everything else. God, how she missed them. She still hadn’t gotten over the grief of losing her husband and her son just a year ago. Every time her mind went back to the day she received the news, it always left her reeling as if she was there again. It had gotten even worse after the one-year anniversary just last month.
This had been the greatest factor that led to her making the decision to sell the house and the fact that she needed to be there for her sick mother now that her father was no longer alive to do it.
* * *
“Mom?”
Tracy’s voice echoed off the now empty walls of the house and pulled Jo out of her melancholy thoughts.
“In here, sweetie,” she called up from the basement.
Shortly after, she heard her daughter’s footsteps falling against the wooden stairs.
“What are you doing down here?” Tracy asked curiously as soon as she moved off the last step.
Jo tried to plaster on a smile, not wanting to worry her daughter, whose concerned gaze was fixed on her.
“I was just trying to see if I could get some of these things upstairs,” she explained, gesturing to the boxes packed with her husband’s gym equipment.
Tracy’s toffee brown eyes widened in alarm at her mother. “Mom, these are way too heavy for you to handle alone. Why didn’t you wait until I got here, or better yet, leave it for the movers to get? It’s their job, after all.”
Jo sighed. “I just— I needed to do something to keep me occupied and…”
Tracy nodded in understanding before reaching over to hug her mother, her head of brunette locks resting against her chest. Jo hugged her daughter tightly against her. At that moment, it felt as if Tracy was the only thing keeping her tethered to this life, and if she let her go, she would crumble into an abyss of perpetual sorrow.
When it felt safe enough, Jo separated from her daughter and gave her a grateful smile, one that Tracy returned, although she could see it in her eyes that her thoughts too had traveled to the tragedy that had taken her father and her brother in an instant.
“I brought food. I hope you’re hungry,” Tracy spoke, turning her head to hide what her mother had already seen.
“Thank you, honey. I actually do have a bit of an appetite,” Jo replied.
The two women left the basement and found themselves in the empty living room where Tracy had left the takeout bag on one of the boxes.
“So, what’d you get?” Jo asked.
“Your favorite,” Tracy replied as she grabbed the bag.
“Smoked leg of a lamb?”
“Try again. It’s something both of us love,” Tracy encouraged her mother.
