the city? I thought you liked Brooklyn. I thought you were doing well with your booth at the Farmer’s Market, and you'll never find a rent control like that again, you know.”
If I’d told her the truth, I’d spend an hour on the phone promising my mother my heart wasn’t as broken as it felt. I’d have to lie to her and say that Nash hadn’t hurt me, that what I felt between us was one-sided and stupid.
“Just want a change of pace,” I’d told her, knowing that she’d pick up my tone, that she’d hear the small lie behind the elevated, forced inflection.
“Willow—”
“Mom, I promise.” Another pitch higher this time and I threw in a laugh. “So tell me about the trip to Costa Rica this spring.”
She had. My mother had gone on for twenty minutes about the group of teenagers she and dad were bringing with them to help build wells in the thick of the jungle, while I pushed my clothes, my dishes, and books into boxes. Already I planned to walk away from Brooklyn because staying hurt too badly. It wasn’t enough that the dreams consumed me. They kept me up. They blocked my sleep patterns and diluted my aura. I felt it heavy on my skin. Like a bruise that covered my entire body.
Those memories soaked into my mind like oil—clinging until there was only the sight of Sookie holding that rope and the horror I felt, the terror on her beautiful face as she stared down at me. I could still smell the thick smoke choking me, I still heard Sylv’s prayers as he said them over and over. Then, she fell and part of me, of Dempsey, died. I felt it slip away like a second skin. I felt it leave and knew it wouldn’t return.
And Riley… my God. The slip of her world as it went away, the soft weight of her baby on her chest. The warm press of Isaac’s sweet kiss against her… against my mouth.
“God.”
This was not the time to think of it. Not when there were taxies zipping through the streets and a construction crew coming closer to our building; tar from their truck puffed great swells of thick liquid into the air and the smell made me a little queasy. I had a lot to do anyway miles and miles to go tomorrow before I made it to Lake Winfred.
I ran the back of my wrist against my eyes to dry my face and picked up another box, stuffing it between three frames and my father’s old turntable. It was an ancient thing, something Grandpa Ryan, my father’s father, had given to him, something I was sure he’d gotten from his dad, my great-granddaddy O’Bryant. It had been broken for years when I found it after Grandpa Ryan’s death and my father wanted me to have it. “A family heirloom,” my father had joked, handing it over to me along with old Fats Domino and Muddy Waters vinyls. “Use them well,” he’d told me.
Now that turntable was snug on the floorboard of my car, ready to go with me to the cottage. There would be no neighbors to disturb with my music and, God willing, no memories to haunt me when I got there.
“Where do you want these?” a mover asked, motioning with the two lamps in his hands.
“Those can go in the van. They’re headed to storage.”
No need to bring those along to the cottage, when my mother had likely already seen to it that the place was outfitted with food, dishes, and toiletries, not to mention lamps. The rest of my things would go to a storage facility in the city. My rugs and tapestries, many of my books, most of my cooking supplies all would be there, forgotten until I’d licked my wounds for an appropriate amount of time and decided where I’d start over again.
I shut the trunk of my car and opened the passenger side door, pushing the seat back to feel around for my cell when my elbow shoved against something I thought was my jewelry box, but instead turned out to be the small wooden box my parents dropped off just a week ago.
The clasp was gold and there was a heavy inlay of filigree along the sides and at the corners. Fleur de leis from the look of them, all faint with age. Opening it, I felt the soft fabric that lined the box, the silk pattern and heavy