Chapter Thirty-One
Thirty-One
Tina was charged with possession and parole violation and disappeared again into the correctional system.
I knew eventually I’d get a letter from her, postmarked from one facility or another.
She would go on, as she had always gone on, because that’s what she did.
Meanwhile, I’d keep attending Nar-Anon family meetings and trying to salve the hole in my heart that she’d left behind.
Although at least I no longer felt that the hole would keep me from living my life.
I could be sad about Tina but happy about everything else.
The rest of the winter was long and icy.
The Overbecks all went home after New Year’s, and Flo and I settled into the grind of January through to March.
But we learned that the upside of a long, hard Maine winter is that when it melts and spring comes, you sure appreciate it.
The snow turned muddy and gray and melted away and the birds came back to the yard.
Green shoots spiked from the trees and the earth.
The forest exhaled delicious green fragrances, and we threw all the windows open and let the sea breeze blow the winter mustiness away.
On the nights Jake didn’t sleep over, he wandered up in the morning to have coffee on our porch with us, Hazel cheerfully lolling at his feet.
“I think we should have a housewarming party now that the house is free of culch,” Flo said one April morning, as the skies turned blue and the daffodils bloomed.
She was sprawled on the porch swing, admiring the view.
“We can have it in the garden. I’ll make the guest list. Basically, that’s everyone in town, and Jake’s family and our family.
Suni, Wayne, Ali…” She ticked them off on her fingers.
Our family. The words filled me with a glow.
“I finished the sign,” Jake told me, scratching behind Hazel’s ears until she whined with pleasure.
I had decided that our house needed a name. Elton’s house had a name. It was called “Sylvie by Sea,” the name painted on a little sign to the left of the door. Given our house was its twin, it seemed wrong for it not to have one too.
Jake had made a little sign identical to Elton’s and, after breakfast, the three of us circled the front door for the ceremonial hanging. Hazel tripped over her own feet in her haste to be part of the pack. The cats sat in the parlor window, watching us curiously.
“A bit to the left,” I told Jake as he tried to position our sign. Jake moved the little wooden sign to the left.
“Up a bit,” Flo ordered. He moved it up.
“There,” he said.
“Yes,” we agreed.
I put my arm around Flo as we watched him hammer it in. We’d tossed around many names for the house. Marly’s Place was winning for a while, although Flo pushed hard for The Mac ’n’ Cheese Shack. But in the end, there was only one name that worked for me.
Jake hammered the nails in and stepped back. Carved into the wood in looping letters was our house’s new name.
Forever Amber.
He nodded. “Good name,” he said.
“You have to say that,” Flo complained, “because she’s your mom.”
“No, I don’t.”
“Yes, you do. She’s your mom.”
They kept bickering as they went back into the house, the eggshell blue door closing behind them.
I sat down on the top step of the porch and looked down the street toward the bay.
The spring sky was sparkling blue, as though it had been freshly painted.
Rays of light fell in golden shafts through the clouds, which cast shadows on the rippling sea, the waves distant brushstrokes of white foam.
The light wind made the firs in the woods whisper and carried the smell of rising sap and unfurling spring.
Along the path to the front porch daffodils nodded their bonneted heads in the teasing breeze.
Soon the garden would be blooming, and summer would come with its summer people, their towels hung to dry like bunting on the front fences.
I couldn’t wait for the lilacs to froth and flower, their perfume welcoming me home.
Today was just an ordinary day. The kind that comes every day, one ordinary day in a long chain of ordinary days. But, I thought as I let the day bloom around me, ordinary days can change your life.
A pale, silvery moon hung almost transparent in the blue morning sky, and I thought about how my mother had gifted it to me, long ago, when I was small and alone.
And how I still had the moon, all these years later, as I sat on the stoop of my own house, staring at this beautiful world, even if I didn’t have my mother, and hadn’t had her for a long time.
I exhaled. It was good to be home.