Not Every Home Is Meant to Be Returned To novel · Chapter 23 of 24

Chapter 23: Two Envelopes

On the night of the twenty-seventh of August, the house was full of boxes.

Dad had been stacking them in the front hall for a week, each one labeled in marker. He had taken a rented room over the hardware store, near his new job, and he had only a bed and a lamp to put in it.

Mom's boxes stood in the garage with a sticky note on top: Collect Thursday. She had not been back.

I stood in the upstairs hall with my backpack on one shoulder.

The big bedroom at the end of the hall had been my grandmother's before it was my parents'.

Dad had cleared it that afternoon. The bed was stripped and the dresser was bare.

The window faced the creek.

The great-uncle had brought me his two envelopes on Sunday, and I had propped them against the lamp on the dresser.

"Are you going to go in?" Lacey asked. She was leaning on the banister with a mug of tea.

"I think so."

"Do you want me to come?"

"No. Thanks."

I pushed the door open.

The room smelled like dust and the lemon polish Dad had used on the floor.

I set my backpack on the mattress and took out Grandma's photograph, the one from my nightstand.

I put it on the dresser, and it stood there, and I looked at her face for a long time.

Then I sat on the floor and took the ribbon off the bundle of envelopes.

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