She was back at the rental house, a small two-story bungalow that for the previous three years had been a home. A starter home. A love nest, even, for her and Jason, and the dog that he’d since kept after carefully and tearfully negotiated arrangements. They made deals about the furniture, too, the glassware and silverware, movie and book collection, the bed linens, all of it appearing on an itemized list with two separate columns.

Two separate lives.

Laurel had made plans to come pick up the last of her stuff. And to leave 1220 Maple Street, and Jason, for the last time—if he was even home. The original plan was for him to be conveniently absent, and for her to grab her stuff in exchange for her pair of house keys. It would be easier that way, with him safely gone. She preferred it, minimal to no interaction for the rest of the way.

On the slanted concrete porch at 1220 Maple Street, Laurel gripped the key and prepared to slide it into the lock. But when her hand touched the doorknob, it turned easily. Pushing the door open, the soft strains of music met her ears. His music, New Country—another topic of their fights: the merits of music, new vs. old.

The twang grew louder as Laurel cautiously entered, tiptoeing in, finding her ex in the kitchen, Jason, bearded and in sloppy clothes, running a rag over the counter top. The place was half empty and smelled of cheap lemony cleaning products.

“Hey,” she said over the music. “What are you doing here?”

“I live here,” Jason said without looking up, still scrubbing away at the marble counter top.

“Not anymore. No one does.”

“I have until the end of the week,” he said. “To get our deposit back.”

He would keep the deposit money. It was part of the deal, him giving the house a deep clean and adding in some minor repairs—including plastering a few holes he’d put in the drywall. Remnants of how they’d spend their quality time together. She hadn’t seen yet whether he was able to replace the bathroom door. It came down in their latest dust-up, when she thought she would be safe behind an inch and a half of wood. He busted it down like a piece of cardboard and then stormed in, dragging her out by her hair so that her bare back screeched along the linoleum.

“Yeah, I know,” she said. “But you knew I was coming.”

And he knew he wasn’t supposed to be there.

Jason squeezed another spray of lemon cleaner. “Well I had to work an extra shift, so it was either today or nothin’ at all this week. You know I don’t have much time to get—”

“But we made arrangements for—”

“Hey, Laurel. Who cares? We don’t have to talk. We don’t have to interact at all. Just come and grab your shit and go.”

Yep, that was a much better idea.

She walked through the kitchen, pacing quickly to her study at the back of house. She couldn’t help noting with some sadness the emptiness of each room. The place looked so much bigger without furniture, and without her and Jason. Without the dog, too. Laurel was still so used to their little dachshund rushing in to greet her.

“Where’s Yoda?” she called.

“He’s at home.”

His new home, his new place across town with Jason.

When Laurel reached the study, she found that it had already been cleared out. So on her way back to the kitchen, she asked. “Where is it all?”

“In the garage.”

“Why is it in the garage?”

He sighed, still scrubbing. “Did you come by yourself?”

“Why?”

“Well, who’s gonna help you?” He tossed the rag aside and turned around, leaning back on the counter top. “Let me guess. Me?”

“Is it really that heavy?”

“Is your Mom’s ol’ chest of drawers heavy?”

Laurel looked at the empty kitchen. The empty spot for her toaster oven, the rice cooker, where she’d once had her wine rack. The empty hooks for their pots and pans. Even the fucking juicer no one used, all of it gone and split up forever.

Damn it. It shouldn’t have been so sad . . . But she used to love cooking there, washing vegetables at the sink while staring out that big bay window, looking over her carefully tended garden. Or mornings sipping on coffee, the dew still fresh on the dark greens of kale. Mornings he’d wake up after her, slipping into the kitchen and coming up behind her with that healthy morning wood of his, wrapping his arms around her waist and just standing there without a word.

It hadn’t been all bad.

It was hard to imagine that now.

Laurel turned away from the window, and this time he was staring at her with a defeated frown. His eyes a little red from the cleaning products. He’d always been sensitive to the chemicals. Or had he been crying?

“Do you mind?”

He shrugged and leaned off the counter, walking past her to the garage.

They worked together for the first time in what felt like an eternity, loading whatever furniture and bankers’ boxes they could fit in the back of her old wood-paneled minivan. The drawers were the heaviest, and after that, when it was apparent that his services were not absolutely necessary, he shrugged at her again and disappeared back into the house.

She had a few more boxes to schlep into the back, and a few garbage bags of old clothes— mostly things that no longer fit her. They were the dead remains of her previous life, her old body. Slimmer, younger. Through all their discord, the only one true constant was her emotional eating. And the worse their relationship got, the more dependent she became on the chips, the ice cream, to see her through the increasingly rough times, until even the eating itself, became an issue between them.

Still, Laurel had no heart to throw the clothes away. She liked and missed them almost as much as she liked and missed the old body that could fit in them. But maybe she could still make it work, somehow. Maybe it wasn’t too late.

It wasn’t. Of course it wasn’t.

When everything had been packed away in the minivan, she returned to the kitchen to find Jason half submerged in the oven. He was scrubbing at the old blackened burnt bits of over-spilled lasagna. Scrubbing hard with something that was making a rough, scratchy sound.

“Thanks again for doing all that,” she said.

“Why? I’m keeping all the money.”

“I don’t care about the money.”

“Well, whatever. You’re welcome.”

“How’s Yoda doing?”

“He’s good.”

That’s all he would say these days. One- or two-word answers to her sincere questions, her sincere attempts to at least end things on a civil, respectable note.

“Well,” Jason said, getting back to his oven. “Have a good one.”

She tossed the keys on the counter and walked out to her car.

* * *

Before leaving the bathroom, she did that one thing she had trained herself against for so long. She looked in the mirror, that same mirror that she’d spent staring into and struggling with for almost twenty years, since her childhood. It was a place of battle, of anguished judgment, the daily speculations on how many pounds she’d not only failed to lose, but how many she had gained.

Staring in the mirror of the bathroom in her old childhood home, Laurel sighed heavily. Then she grabbed at her mid section, pinching a roll through her shirt, holding it out and staring at it with contempt.

Outside the bathroom she heard her mother again. “What, Mama?”

“I said, you brought this here ’cause I have room for it. But pretty soon I won’t have any.”

“Well that’s the last of it.” She left the bathroom and found Mama in a lawn chair on the screened-in sun porch, a window fan blowing onto her face, a cat stretched across her feet.

“I’m not a storage unit here.”

“I know,” Laurel said. “It’s just temporary.”

“How long is temporary? And how long have you been at that new place now?”

“I’m working on it.”

“Working on what? Laurel, it’s all nice stuff here.”

“I know.”

“I don’t see why you can’t just bring it on over to your new place already. Don’t you need furniture there?”

“I do, but, not that furniture.”

Mama sighed, folding her hands in her lap. “What’s goin’ on with it? Bad memories?”

“I just don’t want to see it.”

“Neither do I.”

“I know,” Laurel sat on a small bench against the wall. “But I just can’t see it right now. I can’t wake up and look at it every day.”

“So you’d rather wake up and look an empty apartment?”

“It’s not empty.”

“Baby, I seen it. It’s empty.”

“I’m buying all new stuff, Mama.”

“With whose money?”

“Well, I just got that promotion. I told you. And I’ll be selling all this stuff. I’ll take care of it.”

“You’ll take care of it, huh?”

“Yeah,” said Laurel. “In a little while.”

“Ha!”

“I just can’t deal with it right now.”

“Well you’re gonna have to some time. Can’t leave it all up to your Mama to deal with. ’Specially since I never told you to move in with that man and buy all that new stuff anyhow.”

“Stop it.”

“I’m just sayin’.”

“Can you not?” Laurel rubbed her temples. “Please? I’m so tired.”

“Lordy.” Mama looked around at her already cluttered sun porch. “Well, I’m tired, too.”

* * *

Laurel sat behind the wheel. How the hell had it all ended up like this? Although her new apartment wouldn’t be tainted with the artifacts of her old life, it was still empty. It was hard to decide which was worse, though she usually ultimately sided with the old stuff being a little more mentally poisonous than a few bare rooms and blank walls. She could deal with bare rooms. They were her rooms, and her small collection of things. She tried to imagine the empty rooms as potential spaces for new, good memories.

Still, she wasn’t too excited about going home and facing it. She wasn’t up for making new memories tonight. She was too exhausted for that. Work had been tough all week, and instead of making new memories, and making a new life at home, she would probably just return to her apartment like a zombie, going through the motions, from a microwaved frozen dinner to a cold, empty bed. For now, she would have to go through some more motions—like turning the key and starting up her car, despite her just wanting to finally break down and weep in her Mama’s driveway all night.

Okay . . . It was time to go home. . .

Home?

Laurel checked her phone before turning over the key. She found one new message from an unfamiliar number.

Please call back to set up a meeting tonight. Important question for you. Your pal, Abe Hudson.