“Sure, Mom,” Melissa agreed, relief evident in her voice. “Take whatever personal items you want. We can send the rest later.”
I moved through my home one last time, touching the worn banister Nicholas had sanded and re-varnished every five years. The quilt my grandmother had made that draped across our bed. The window seat where I’d read stories to my children on rainy afternoons.
In the bathroom, I retrieved my medications, but also slipped my passport and birth certificate from the hidden compartment in the medicine cabinet—the one Nicholas had built when we first worried about burglaries in the late ’80s. In our bedroom closet, behind Nicholas’s collection of flannel shirts that still smelled faintly of him, I retrieved the small fireproof box containing the one thing my children didn’t know about.
When I came downstairs, my purse was heavier, but my heart felt lighter with resolve. Brandon was checking his watch.
