I found Sophia in the living room when I arrived home, grinning, glee and pride radiating from every pixel. I couldn’t help but smile back while asking what happened. First, our baby got her first report card, and she is a B student! As someone who was perfectly fine with C’s, I was so extremely proud of our girl. I’d been saying she’s super smart ever since she began babbling to me in her early infant days, and it was so rewarding to be proven right. The other thing that excited Sophia was she got a job with the perfect schedule. She’ll start tomorrow at a retail store from 9 to 1 Tuesday through Saturday. It sucked she’d have to work on the weekends, but at least it was only for a few hours. We can manage that.
“What about you?” she asked. “Where’ve you been all day?”
“I started out at the cemetery and-“
She gasped.
“You went without me?”
“Yeah, sorry. It was a spur of the moment decision. And I’d been avoiding it for so long…I just needed to go before I lost my nerve.”
“I get that. Sorry…you were saying something.”
“It’s fine. I went there, and then I got flowers and stuff to spruce up the plots. Then Less called saying she needed to talk, so we hung out in Oasis Springs for a while.”
“Is she alright?”
I sighed.
“Yeah. She’s great, actually. She’s seeing someone and is really excited about him.”
“I feel a really big but coming.”
“She’s moving out tomorrow.”
“Oh. Oh! She’s moving in with him?”
“HELL no!! She just…” I shook my head and sighed, proud of the decision she made but sad about her leaving me again. “She’s matured so much since Mama died. This is just something she feels like she needs to do.”
“Sounds like a good thing. You’re not happy for her?”
“I am! I really really am. All I’ve wanted is to see her thrive. It’s just that we moved here so we could all be together and so the kids could play and grow up together. With her leaving, I just don’t know what to do now. The only reason I even wanted a place like this was to rent the other side to her. I don’t want a stranger all up in our space. But I also don’t see the point of letting it sit empty.”
“So, you want to go back to our house, then?”
“I don’t know. This house is pretty great. I don’t think either of us expected to love it so much.”
“Yeah. I really do love it here. But it’s not like you have to decide right now. Letting it sit for a minute isn’t going to hurt anything.”
“Yeah. True. I’m just bummed. Like, I always knew our time here was temporary. And I knew Less would be the first to go. I just never figured that day would come so fast. We’ve barely broken in this house.”
She was right, though. This wasn’t the big deal I made it out to be, and I didn’t need to address it right now. But thinking about it and our other empty houses, one thing I did need to take care of was finding new tenants for Dad’s house.
