Chapter 15 - THE FLOOR I CHOSE TO REPAIR
By October, the cabin smelled like cut pine again.
The contractor replaced the damaged joists and most of the bedroom floor.
I asked him to leave one original plank.
Not the broken one.
A sound piece near the window where morning light always fell.
I wanted something old to remain without pretending old meant safe.
The money from the Cherry Hills claim did not make me rich.
It returned part of what I had given away carelessly.
I used some to repair the cabin.
Some went into a conservative account in my own name.
No child as co-signer.
No child handling the statements.
At seventy-four, I finally started opening my own financial mail.
Catherine found that hilarious.
“You’re becoming dangerous.”
“I have online banking now.”
“God help Colorado.”
Our relationship was better.
Not repaired.
Better.
There is a difference.
I visited Fort Collins twice without mentioning Mason unless Catherine did first.
I asked about her work.
Tom’s knee surgery.
Her daughter’s graduate-school applications.
Things I should have asked about more often years ago.
Catherine stopped bracing every time my phone number appeared.
That felt like progress.
Vanessa and I had no direct contact.
She sent one box to the cabin through Leah.
Inside were Mason’s college photographs, his father’s watch, two sweaters, and the little wooden trout he carved at twelve.
No note.
I kept the trout.
I stored the rest in the cedar chest.
Mason’s six-page confession stayed with Leah in my legal file.
I did not keep it under my bed.
Dead people already take up enough room if you let them.
On the first cold Sunday in November, I carried coffee into the repaired bedroom.
Snow had begun falling above the pines.
The dresser was back where it belonged.
One photograph stood on it.
Walter, Mason, Catherine, and me outside the cabin thirty years earlier.
I used to look at that photograph and see the son I lost.
Now I saw something else.
Catherine standing slightly apart because Mason and I were laughing at a joke she had not heard.
Small things become patterns when nobody notices them.
My phone buzzed.
Catherine.
I answered.
“You busy?”
“Drinking coffee.”
“Tom and I were talking about Thanksgiving.”
I waited.
She had not spent Thanksgiving at the cabin in eleven years.
“We could come up Wednesday,” she said. “If you still want us.”
My throat tightened.
“I do.”
“Just us?”
I understood the question.
No memorial dinner built around Mason.
No evening spent putting the dead son back at the center of the living family.
“Just us.”
Catherine was quiet.
Then:
“Okay. I’ll let you know.”
Not yes.
Not no.
After we hung up, I went into the hallway and looked down at the new floor.
The place where I had fallen was solid now.
I could walk across it without thinking about Vanessa in the doorway or blood on a tissue or papers hidden beneath my feet.
I carried Mason’s wooden trout downstairs and placed it on the mantel beside one photograph of Catherine as a teenager.
Then I opened the pantry and started writing a Thanksgiving grocery list for four people.
I did not know whether Catherine would actually come.
For once, I did not call again to make sure.
I had spent too much of my life forcing family closeness to look like certainty.
The cabin was mine.
The money had been accounted for.
Vanessa could no longer erase me from Mason’s estate, and I no longer needed to make Mason innocent in order to love him.
The only unfinished part was the living daughter I should have seen more clearly years ago.
May you like
So I left Wednesday blank on the calendar.
And waited to see whether Catherine would choose to fill it.
