The morning after I buried the only person who had ever stayed, my mother handed me two garbage bags and told me to make room for the people who hadn’t.
Behind her, a moving truck idled beside Grandpa’s rosebushes.
My father stood on the lawn directing two men toward the porch, waving his hands with the easy confidence of someone accustomed to taking things other people had paid for.
And my sister Chloe walked straight past me.
“I’ll take the master bedroom.”
She said it without looking at the funeral wreath hanging on the door.
Without noticing the casserole dishes crowding the kitchen counter.
Without asking why I was wearing a man’s flannel shirt three sizes too big, or why the mug in my hands shook so badly that cold coffee spilled over my fingers.
I had been five the last time all three of them stood inside that house.
