Chapter 6: The Shoebox

The sheriff gave me an escort on Monday morning, and it was not my mother's cousin.

It was a young deputy with a freckled neck, who parked in my mother's driveway and said, "Ma'am, I'm only here to see nobody stops you."

"Thank you," I said.

Anson had driven us, and he stayed in the car at the curb.

"I'll wait here," he said.

"I know."

"You don't have to do this one yourself."

"Yes, I do."

He nodded once and turned off the engine.

Dot took my right arm as we walked up the front path, which I let her do.

Mom was at the Safe Home Auxiliary luncheon until one.

Dot had learned that from a woman at church.

The key still fit the lock.

I stood in my mother's front hall, with its pale carpet and its lavender air freshener, and the whole house closed around me.

"Quick," Dot said. "In and out."

I walked down the hall to my wing.

My bedroom door had a brass bolt screwed into the outside of the frame.

It was shiny from three years of use.

I had never seen it from this side.

Inside, my bed was made with hospital corners.

The bathroom had no door, only the bare hinges and a white strip of fresh paint where the wood had been.

In the vanity drawer lay a metal nail file, a roll of tape and a jar.

Inside the jar were the hinge pins from my bathroom door, each one labelled in my mother's neat hand.

Jo's door.

"She kept them," Dot said, very softly.

I closed the drawer.

It took me three minutes to pack.

One duffel bag, a few clothes, my father's old wristwatch from the nightstand that Mom had never let me wear.

Then I stood in the doorway with the bag on my shoulder and looked at the closed door to my mother's bedroom.

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