my point. I miss Walker. I miss him terribly and I don’t know what’s going to happen. But for the first time ever, I’m only accountable to myself and I like it. I’m not proud of why I’m at this point, but I’m doing my best to figure it out, and I’m kind of enjoying it, parts of it anyway.”
Melody wondered what it would be like to live alone—to come home every night and turn on the lights of a darkened house and have nobody waiting to hear about your day or eat dinner with you or argue about which show to watch or help clear the table. She wouldn’t tell Jack how sad it sounded to her. Upstairs, she could hear an electric saw.
“I’ll be sorry if you and Walker don’t get back together,” she finally said.
“Oh, I’m sure I’ll go running and crying back to his capable meaty arms soon enough. But I doubt he’ll have me.”
Just then, Walt and the girls came into the kitchen. “Look!” Nora said. She had a piece of woodwork in her hand. Melody recognized it immediately. It was from the upstairs hall closet, the piece of wood where she’d recorded the girls’ heights at least once a year: red for Nora; blue for Louisa. “This is the first thing I asked for,” Nora said.
“You did?” Melody was pleased that Nora thought to take it because Louisa had always been the more sentimental of the two. “What a perfect idea.”
“We started a list,” Walt said. “Look it over and see if you agree.” Someone above them was hammering; the kitchen light fixture swayed a little.
Melody looked at the list. It was extensive. She couldn’t imagine all those things—floorboards, windows, banisters, molding—sitting in Jack’s storage space gathering dust. A house but not quite; bits of a building that didn’t add up to a home.
“I don’t want to keep anything,” Melody said.
The room went quiet. “Funny,” Walt said, laughing and then stopping when he saw that Melody was serious.
“I want that.” Melody pointed to the piece of wood in Nora’s hand, marking the years they’d lived there and how much the girls had grown; it was covered with fingerprints and gray with grime because she’d never cleaned that bit, afraid of accidentally smearing or erasing the carefully drawn lines with dates next to them. “That’s the only thing I want.”
Jack was watching Melody carefully. “I don’t mind storing things for you,” he said.
“I know,” Melody said. “Let’s get anything out of here you think is worth money and sell it.”
“Melody,” Walt said, frustrated, “I’m confused.”
“I’m so grateful to you both for thinking of this. Please don’t think I’m not grateful. But— Let’s sell it. Use the money to fix up our new place.”
“You’re sure?” Walt said.
“I’m positive.” She turned to Jack. “You can sell all this and make a commission, right?”
“If that’s what you want, yes.” He was surprised, but pleased. He didn’t really have the room to keep everything he’d imagined she’d want to keep.
“And you two are okay with this?” she asked Nora and Louisa. She felt good, lighter, in charge.
They both nodded. “We just wanted to do something to make you feel better,” Louisa said. “We wanted to make you happy.”
“I have what makes me happy,” she said. Melody wasn’t even sure she understood the impulse making her want to let go, but she decided not to overthink it for once. Having things from the house wasn’t the same as having the house. Given all that had happened over the past year, nothing was the same, and it was time to stop holding on for dear life. And just like that, she felt like the General again. Their family might look like they were in retreat, but she knew better. She was the General and if anything was an advance, this was it.
CHAPTER FORTY–THREE
It was the craziest thing. When Matilda would tell the story later, and she and Vinnie would tell the story a lot in the coming years, the story of The Kiss would be their story and after the tenth, the hundredth, the thousandth time would still be told in almost exactly the same way, always starting with the same sentence, It was the craziest thing. How they went to Brooklyn the day before Mother’s Day, and because some adjustments were being done to Vinnie’s prosthetic arm, he wasn’t wearing it, a rare occurrence. How Matilda had fought him about taking the subway because her stump was particularly painful and