Chapter 33
Willow
Skydiving
Visit Japan
Sell the house
Hollis brushed her palms down the front of her jeans. After a bike ride across the High Trestle Trail, we’d hauled the boxes from the garage into the house that afternoon. I’d very quickly realized sorting through Mom’s things while sitting on a concrete floor was not going to work.
“Sure you don’t want help?” She eyed the stack of boxes skeptically, and I followed her gaze, reading the familiar handwriting in black Sharpie.
I’d forgotten Spencer helped us box things, but seeing his neatly formed letters didn’t send me down a wormhole of memories—not about him, anyway.
The ones we’d dragged in were labeled with “Documents/Papers,” “Bedroom,” and “Kitchen,” and I honestly had no idea what I’d find in each one. “Happy to help if you want,” she added.
“I think I should at least start on my own.” I’d walked by the boxes so many times since Cruz told me to go look for them and finally decided I needed to start.
I couldn’t say why—maybe it was knowing the trip back to Colorado was in a few days or just that I’d felt braver since starting on the list, but I knew it was time.
I thanked Hollis and took the tape off the box labeled “Documents/Papers,” finding neatly sealed plastic tubs inside.
I smiled, knowing that was probably Spencer’s doing, making sure things were protected.
Again, though, the feeling that swept through me was gratitude and not longing or hurt.
The first box looked like mail and papers that had probably been tossed on the counter.
After thirty minutes, most of it was trash or bills we’d already taken care of, and I reached for my phone and stretched after sitting in place so long.
Maybe I’d hoped to find something important, something meaningful.
I’d started this re-do list for a lot of reasons, but one of them was definitely wanting to avoid ending up trapped like she was, as someone who gave up on things because they reminded her of the past. Maybe I’d been hoping for something else, some reason to see she wasn’t irrevocably changed by heartbreak, but that was probably too much to hope for from old bills and junk mail and receipts.
I wasn’t learning anything meaningful. I rolled my head from side to side and reached for my phone where I had a message waiting from Deacon.
Deacon: How’s it going?
Willow: Found a winning lottery ticket in the stack. $3!
Willow: What are the odds you’d know two big winners?
It still blew my mind that his friend Sybil had won the lottery and won big. When I met her and her fiancé, they were the most down-to-earth people I could imagine.
Deacon: I guess I’m a lucky charm. You’re heading to Monaco, then?
Willow: Already on the plane. It’s been nice knowing you. I’m off to be rich and elusive.
My phone buzzed with an incoming call, and I tapped the green icon. “We’re taxiing—it’s too late to change my mind.”
Deacon’s low, easy voice made my heart do a little flutter, even through the phone. “I’ll never forget you.” It was a joke. I knew it was a joke, but it still made that flutter even more pronounced. “How’s it actually going?”
I tapped the speaker button and returned to sorting. Nothing would quell the flutter of an inappropriate crush like sorting through junk mail of the deceased. “Okay, actually. We threw everything we found in boxes, but most of this is trash.”
I pulled out a plain-looking white envelope with For T scrawled on the front in an unfamiliar handwriting.
Inside there was a single folded piece of paper.
“Thanks for checking up on me, though. I’m fine.
” Next to me, the dog stretched, his big paw nudging against my thigh. “Gus is keeping me company.”
“You want me to come over tonight? I promised Jayden I’d join him for a game when I got back from the gym, but after?”
“Yeah,” I said. I grinned and wondered if he knew how his voice sounded when he talked about spending time with the kid.
It was the same way he sounded when he talked about the people he served with.
“I’d like it if you came over,” I said, already anticipating the way my stomach did a little flip-flop when he walked through the door.
Things were so different now, and I remembered the rush of him taking hold of me in the entryway before his back gave out last week.
He’d been at the gym a lot lately, and based on the sound of weights clanking in the background, I guessed he was there now.
We hung up, and I still had a grin on my face as I returned to the envelope in my hands.
The paper was plain printer paper, and it was a copy of an email confirmation for a skydiving class for two, along with a handwritten note on a Post-it in my mom’s loopy handwriting.
The note said, Too late to back out now.
We’re booked! I stared at the email—the date for the session had long passed, and I had no idea who T might have been.
My mom didn’t do things like skydiving, but the date on the email was for only a few weeks before her accident.
I set it gingerly aside on top of the small pile of things to save or review and kept digging in the box.
More junk mail and bills, a few magazines, and then an official-looking envelope, unopened.
I tore at the perforated cardboard and found a crisp new passport inside, the pages stiff and my mom’s unsmiling photo at the front.
I traced a finger over the stamp. We didn’t know she had one—she never enjoyed traveling.
I wished I could message Cruz, but there was only Gus to hear me today. “Where was she going?”
I set it aside as well and kept digging into the box where I found cards from Realtors and a printed confirmation for a flight to Tokyo.
I couldn’t believe what I was seeing, because the mom I’d known since the divorce would never skydive or need a passport, let alone sell the house she’d fought my dad for.
The time had flown while I was digging through things, and the sun was already setting when I looked up again.
Question marks and new discoveries were the last things I’d expected to find among my mom’s possessions.
Had my mom been on her own kind of re-do journey?