Chapter 23 #2
“Maybe. But it's also true.” Maggie put her hand on Christopher's arm. “You don't have to carry his expectations anymore. You haven't had to for a long time. The man you've become, the husband you are to Becca, the father you are to Eloise, that's all you. None of that was about making him proud.”
Christopher was quiet for a moment, looking at the glove. Then he set it in the box gently and reached for the roll of stickers on the nightstand. He peeled off a red one and pressed it to the box.
“Some things are worth keeping,” he said. “Even when the memories are complicated.”
Becca emerged from the closet with an armful of varsity jackets. “Speaking of complicated, did you really need three letterman jackets?”
“I lettered in three sports.”
“Of course you did.”
Maggie left them to their sorting and continued down the hall.
She could hear Chelsea in the attic, her footsteps creaking overhead, probably taking photographs of everything before it was disturbed.
Chelsea had always been a documenter, capturing moments for posterity, understanding instinctively that memory was fragile and photographs were one way to hold on to what time tried to take.
In Beth's old room, Maggie paused. The walls were still painted the soft lavender that Beth had chosen when she was thirteen, convinced it was the most sophisticated color in existence.
The furniture had been rearranged over the years as various family members used the room, but the bones of it were the same.
The window seat where Beth had curled up with books for hours at a time.
Maggie sat down on the window seat and looked out at the backyard.
From here, she could see the old swing set, rusted now and listing slightly to one side.
She could see the garden beds, dormant and brown.
She could see the corner where the woodchuck had made its home, where she had stood just this morning saying goodbye to the woman she used to be.
She pulled out her phone and dialed Beth's number.
On the screen, Beth looked up from the laptop feed. “Mom? Is everything okay?”
“Everything's fine. I just wanted to talk to you. Just us, for a minute.”
Beth shifted on the bed, careful not to wake the baby on her chest. Emily stood quietly and slipped out of frame, giving them privacy.
“I'm in your room,” Maggie said. “Sitting on the window seat.”
“I used to love that window seat. I'd sit there for hours, watching the seasons change. Spring was always my favorite. When the trees started budding and everything came back to life.”
“You wrote poems about it. Do you remember? Little verses about springtime and hope and new beginnings.”
“I was twelve. Everything felt profound when I was twelve.”
“You were always a deep thinker. Even as a baby, you'd stare at things with such intensity. Like you were trying to understand the secrets of the universe.”
Beth laughed softly. “And now I'm a mother of twins, and the only secret I'm trying to understand is how to get both of them to sleep at the same time.”
“I'm sorry to tell you that secret doesn't exist.”
“I was afraid of that.”
Maggie looked around the room, at the lavender walls and the single glow-in-the-dark star on the ceiling and all the invisible layers of history that clung to every surface. “I wish you could be here. Really here, I mean. Walking through these rooms with us.”
“I know. I wish I could too.” Beth paused, and Maggie could see her struggling with something. “But maybe it's okay that I'm not. Maybe some goodbyes are supposed to happen from a distance.”
“What do you mean?”
“I've been thinking about it all morning, watching everyone go through their stuff, finding their memories. And I realized that my goodbye to that house happened already. When I got married. When I built my life here, at the farm, with Gabriel.” She adjusted the baby on her chest, her hand moving in the unconscious rhythm of new motherhood.
“That house was my childhood, but it's not who I am anymore.
I'm grateful for it. I'll always be grateful.
But I don't need to walk through those rooms to know what they meant to me.”
Maggie felt tears prick at her eyes. Her youngest daughter, her baby, sounding so wise, so grown. When had that happened? When had the little girl who wrote poems about springtime become this woman who understood things Maggie was still learning?
“I'm proud of you,” Maggie said. “I don't say that enough. But I'm so proud of the woman you've become.”
“You say it plenty, Mom. You always have.”
“Then I'll say it again. I'm proud of you.”
They sat in silence for a moment, mother and daughter, connected across miles by a screen and by something deeper that no distance could diminish.
“Mom?” Beth said finally. “Don't forget to check the back of my closet. There's a loose floorboard where I used to hide things I didn't want anyone to find.”
“What kind of things?”
“Just things. Notes from friends. A diary. Maybe some questionable poetry.”
“More questionable than the springtime poems?”
“Much more questionable. Burn it if you have to. I trust your judgment.”
Maggie laughed. “I'll take a look.”
She ended the call and crossed to the closet, kneeling down to feel along the floor until she found the loose board.
Beneath it, just as Beth had said, was a small collection of treasures: a journal with a sparkly cover, a stack of folded notes, a dried flower pressed between sheets of wax paper, and a photograph of a boy Maggie didn't recognize, his face earnest and young.
She didn't read the journal or unfold the notes. Some secrets belonged to the people who had kept them, even years later. Instead, she placed everything back under the floorboard and pressed it into place.
Some things were meant to stay hidden. Some goodbyes didn't need witnesses.
She stood and brushed off her knees, then walked to the doorway and looked back at the room one more time. Lavender walls. A single star on the ceiling. A window seat where a little girl had once watched the world and dreamed of everything she would become.
“Thank you,” Maggie whispered. “For holding her while she grew.”
Then she turned off the light and went to find the rest of her family.