39. Nicole

The tires on Michael's rental car screech as he peels out of the driveway, hurling down the road at forty-plus miles per hour. He didn't even grab his belongings. He just left. Beth stomps off in the opposite direction, toward the house. The front door slams with a bang, punctuating her rage. The fire is still ablaze, burning through the boxes. With no one feeding it, it'll be out within the hour, just a pile of embers and ash. It's true what they say: nothing lasts forever.

A light breeze tickles my bare arm. It hasn't felt anything but the cast that encased it for the past four weeks. The doctor finally removed it today. He said my arm was strong enough to not need the extra support. That might be true for my arm, but I'm not so sure it's true for me.

Inside the house, I call Beth's name. I can't remember the last time I've seen her so upset. Maybe when Dad went missing. Maybe when she blew out her knee. Or maybe with me. The glass sliding door to the deck is slightly ajar. The wind whips through the crack, whistling. I go to close it and see Beth's head bobbing up and down as she stomps across the hillside, heading toward the valley. One hand is a balled-up fist by her side while the other clutches a spiral notebook. It looks like one of Mom's journals. I wonder if she's also going to incinerate that. I consider going after her but figure she wants to be alone. I can put out any fires she might start, but I can't extinguish the one burning inside of her. When the valley swallows Beth, my eyes go to the bare trees. They've been stripped of nearly all their leaves, their most fragile organs, expelled to conserve energy in order to endure the winter season. Sometimes you have to lose parts of yourself just to survive.

The sky has darkened to a steel gray. In the distance, thick, bulbous clouds pile on top of one another, brewing a storm as they head in our direction. How fitting. Stacks of boxes still fill the living room, even though Beth burned at least a dozen of them. I drift down the hallway toward my bedroom. I don't know what to do with myself now. The sealed white envelope sits propped against my bedside lamp. Nicole is scrawled across it in my mother's handwriting. I haven't opened it yet. I remember the instructions the lawyer provided when he handed us each an envelope: Your mother requests you don't open until after the funeral. That was yesterday. I pick it up and turn it over. A piece of Scotch tape holds the flap down, sealing the words Mom left for me. My fingers pick at the sticky adhesive. What did she want to tell me?

Lifting the flap, I pull out a folded piece of computer paper. It looks like a piece of scrap because about a third of its length is missing. I wonder why she didn't use a full sheet. Did she not have much to say? One side is blank, but the other has two lines of her handwriting. My eyes scan the words. There's not many of them. But I read them over and over anyway, ingesting every letter. A teardrop splashes onto the paper, making the word deserved bleed black ink. Another tear lands on the word wanted. My breaths become rapid and frenzied, expiring from my nose in short, quick bursts. My skin warms as the blood underneath begins to boil. The letter slips from my fingers and slowly floats to the floor. I mouth my mother's parting words once more...

You're not the child I wanted, but you're the one I deserved.

–Regretfully, your mother