“No, I’m not sick.” Mom sets down her pudding bowl on the coffee table. “I wasn’t planning on saying anything to you tonight, since you just got here, but it seems like your brother has another idea.”
“What’s going on?” Ford asks, setting down his pudding bowl as well.
Mom reaches out and takes Dad’s hand in hers. “We’ve been doing some thinking about our future, and Cooper has been a strong, guiding force behind this decision”—she didn’t need to add that part, but fine—“and after some long conversations and tough decisions, we’ve decided to sell the house.”
“What?” Palmer says loudly while sitting up taller. “Sell this house? Our childhood home? The one we’re sitting in right now? This house?”
“Do you think they have other houses we’re unaware of?” I ask.
“I don’t know,” Palmer says, panic in her voice. “Maybe they do, and that’s where they hide the other halves to Dad’s socks.”
As a collective whole, we all glance at Dad’s socks.
Where are the other halves?
“Are you really selling?” Ford asks, his voice strained but not as alarmed as Palmer’s.
“We are,” Dad confirms with a sturdy nod. “We found a wonderful apartment in the heart of Seattle, right off Western Ave. It’s close to Cooper, walking distance to the water, and the apartment building has all the amenities we’re looking for, including very socially awkward programmers who are excited to have a mom in the building who’s willing and excited to bake cookies for the floor.”
“We’ve made the rounds and introduced ourselves already,” Mom adds.
“Wait.” Palmer closes her eyes and takes a deep breath. Hands extended, a slight shake to them, she says, “You’re going to exchange our childhood memories for a throng of programmers?”
“They’re very sweet when you get them to finally open up. Want me to ask if any of them are single?” Mom asks, growing excited.
“No,” Palmer practically yells. “I don’t get it. What’s the appeal? You love it here. You’re not city people. You’ve spent your whole lives on Marina Island—you grew your business here, you raised your children here—why are you all of a sudden going to move to a high-rise apartment in a city you never even liked? Is this what a late-life crisis looks like?”
Ford turns toward me. “Was this your idea?”
“Not really,” I answer, feeling the blaze of my siblings’ disapproving stares. “They were saying how they couldn’t keep up with the house anymore, they kept calling me to fix everything, and I offered a solution.”
“You told them to sell?” Palmer asks, standing from her seat. “How could you do that, Coop? You know what this house means to us.”
“Hey now, this was our decision ultimately,” Dad cuts in. “And ultimately, the house is too big for us. If you visited more often, maybe we’d consider keeping it, but you don’t. There’s no keeping a large piece of property when we’re the only ones who live here. I hate to say it, but we’re selling, and you’re going to have to clean out your rooms. There are growing families who could benefit from such a wonderful place to make memories.”
“What about our memories?” Palmer asks, getting more emotional than I expected.
Yeah, I thought they were going to be caught off guard, but I wasn’t planning on this kind of reaction.
“Palmer, you’ll still have your memories,” Mom says, a worried look on her face.
“No, some other family will.” With that, she goes to the kitchen, where I see her grab a bottle of wine and head out to the back deck.
“I’ll go talk to her,” Ford says, standing. No surprise there—they’ve always been close.
Which leaves me with Mom and Dad.
Once again.
Unable to look them in the eyes, I stare down at my pudding bowl. “So, that went well.”
I glance up to the disapproving expressions in my parents’ faces.
“Or maybe not,” I mutter.
CHAPTER SIX
PALMER
I tip the bottle of wine back and let the warm liquid flow down my throat.
They’re selling the house.
Actually selling it.
To go live in some sort of high-rise where they can bake cookies for strangers who know binary code better than the English language.
Where the hell did that idea even come from?
Dad wears shorts with holes in the crotch—he’s not a high-rise kind of guy. Mom takes great care of her garden and grows prize-winning zucchinis. Zucchinis that would make any woman weak in the knees with one girthy glance. Does she think she can have a garden in a high-rise?