At exactly 9:00 p.m., the locksmith dropped two sets of pristine silver keys into my palm. I locked the new deadbolt. It was the most profoundly peaceful mechanical sound I had heard in six years.
My phone buzzed in my pocket. A text from Tom Beran.
Executed. Every single line. – TB.
June and I spent the next hour hauling my mother’s boxed belongings out of the suffocating laundry room and carrying them up the grand staircase. We placed her securely back where she belonged. We set her wedding photograph on the mahogany dresser in the master suite. Her worn Bible went onto the proper nightstand, the Golden Pines application permanently removed from the Psalms. June meticulously hung her blouses by color, declaring that Ellen “deserved a closet that bloomed like a garden.”
My mother stood in the exact center of the sprawling master bedroom, slowly turning in a circle, like a woman verifying that a beautiful dream possessed actual, solid corners.
