“Happy birthday!” Mom says when I walk into the kitchen. She doesn’t even turn around—she can tell by the way I walk that it’s me.
“Thanks,” I say, and go to stand beside her at the stove. I lay my head on her shoulder for just a moment and get a whiff of mint and vanilla from the homemade crepes.
“I can’t believe you’re nineteen.”
“Right?” I palm a peach from the basket on the counter and grab a paring knife to slice it up.
“Rinse that,” Mom says, tilting the pan so that the batter from the first crepe covers the entire bottom of the large, round pan. She always throws the first one away. When Law isn’t around, she calls it a sacrifice to the kitchen gods. When he is, she just smiles a secret smile at me and turns it into the garbage can.
I run the tap ice cold and give the peach a gentle wash beneath the spray. I halve it and cut off a sliver, then pop it in my mouth and let the sweetness burst on my tongue. It tastes like a birthday present.
“Where’s Law?” I ask, glancing at the hallway that leads to their room.
“Chores.”
It’s almost eight o’clock. Usually he’s done by now. “And Jonathan?”
“Still sleeping.”
That explains it. Jonathan helps with chores on Sunday mornings so that we can get to church on time. The fact that he’s still sleeping, and that Law let him do it, is shocking to me. There isn’t much to do on our little farm—not when the crops are safely planted and growing, and especially not since Law culled the herd—but the few cattle we do have need to be fed and watered. The chickens, too. And the eggs need to be collected, leftovers set out for the barn cats, and traps checked. Jonathan and I used to do an every-other-day rotation, but since Law works less these days, he likes to putter around the farm and he usually doesn’t care how long it takes him. But church starts at nine thirty, and he should be in the shower by now.
“Want me to wake him?” I ask, worried that the morning will erupt in drama. I’m nineteen, past the point of believing my birthday grants me special princess status, but that doesn’t mean I’m eager for a confrontation today—or any day, for that matter.
“Nah. He’ll be up soon.” Mom sounds deliberately mild, as if she’s trying to be as nonchalant as possible.
Is everyone hiding something from me? “I’ll be back,” I tell her, abandoning my peach on the butcher block.
“Where are you going?”
I mumble something in reply. I just want to be alone.
* * *
It’s a beautiful June morning, the air already warm and laced with the scent of the lindens that line our long drive. They’re in full, heady bloom right now, and the ground is littered with clumps of tiny yellow flowers like fallen stars. I breathe in deeply, trying to memorize the way the sun shines through the heart-shaped leaves and casts dappled, golden light on the gravel lane. As ready as I am to go, there are things that I’ll miss, and this view—the way the hills roll away from our farm and the sky spreads so wide and blue it seems endless—is one of them.
I don’t see Law anywhere, so he must be in the coop or in the barn, and I lean against the trunk of Mom’s car where it pokes out the back of the detached garage. There’s a breezeway between the garage and the house so that Mom doesn’t have to get wet when it’s raining or snowing, but in the summertime, we tend to leave the garage doors wide open and forgo the breezeway in favor of the porch.
Mom is fastidious about her car and keeps exactly two things in her trunk: a faded patchwork quilt for impromptu picnics in the summer and potentially hazardous road conditions in the winter, and a spare tire that she knows how to change without help from AAA. It strikes me that today is the perfect day for a picnic, and I go around to the front of her car to pop the trunk. But when I reach for the quilt, I realize the blanket is unusually high, tucked around something that’s peeking out from beneath a loose corner. I peel the fabric back and find mom’s suitcase staring back at me. It’s a gaudy, floral print that she’s had for as long as I can remember, though it usually collects dust in the attic. I haven’t seen it out in years. What’s it doing in her trunk?
It’s absolutely none of my business, but I’m so sick of people keeping things from me that I reach out and grab a corner of the suitcase. I assume it’s empty, but I can hardly lift it. The big case is clearly packed full.
Glancing over my shoulder to make sure that Lawrence is nowhere to be seen, I pull the suitcase toward me and hurriedly unzip it. I have no idea what I’m going to find, but it’s filled with the most obvious—and unexpected—things imaginable: Mom’s clothes.