Page 1 of Service Included

Chapter 1

Awkward huggers

“I’m thirty-five, Mom. Ican handle keeping some movers on task.” Megan LaSorda eased her mother across the front porch of her soon-to-be-emptied childhood home. “I have all your lists, and if they have any questions, I’ll call.”

“I know, I know. You’re just like your father.” Her mother’s back felt bonier under her palm than Megan had expected. “But I wish you’d have a little more fun.”

“Then I’d be the one going out with Callie, and you’d have to stay behind.” Doing the dull stuff, doing it well, and then doing it again had somehow become her identity without her even noticing the rebranding, to the extent that a retired fire chief and a retired librarian trusted her to close out their home while they entertained their grandchild.

“Kathy.” Her father stood in the yard, jiggling keys in his hand while calling her mom, a lifelong habit that lacked oomph now that they drove a car with a plastic fob. “We’re hungry out here.”

“Go eat pancakes, swim in the new condo pool, and don’t worry about the house.” Over her mom’s shoulder, she watchedher father take her eight-year-old daughter’s hand and stride toward the car. Three decades of responding to emergency calls didn’t create a slow leaver. Next to her father, Callie twirled a flower-print swim bag in her free hand. So much energy in that twig of a girl, regardless of the crazy heat.

“I’m not worried about the house.” Her mother’s tone implied a familiar complaint.

“Well, don’t worry about me either. I can handle anything.”

“I know you can handle things on your own. Very well.” Her mother sighed. “Maybe too well.”

“Mom.” She knew her mother wanted her to find a partner, as if finding someone like Megan’s father, someone who would be by her side for forty years, happened for everyone. As if it happened on command. “Let’s just handle moving day, okay?”

“They’re full service,” her mother said.

“Who?” Megan heard the other woman’s deep breath and long pause before she exhaled. She hoped her mother wasn’t close to crying. They were not crying people. Her mother’s Scandinavian heritage and farm background, filled with Lutheran potlucks and lots of miles between houses, had triumphed over the quarter-Italian in her father’s background. They were loving and kind parents, good listeners, but they were at best awkward huggers and very rare criers. Please, let today not be the exception.

“Full Service Movers. The people I hired.” She waited at the top of the porch steps, almost gone. The look on her face wasn’t anywhere near tears as she hunted in her purse. “You can ask them for anything you want.” And then she leaned so close, Megan caught a hint of mint tea. “A-nee-thing.”

Her mother had dragged that last part out like a secret code word. With recreational pot legalized, had Styrofoam packing peanuts become what people discussed in hushed tones? Even where Megan lived in Seattle, it was still legal to use cardboardand brown paper, despite the ban on plastic bags, foam containers, and plastic straws. “Okay, sure. If I need another box, I’ll ask.”

Side by side, they descended the stairs. Even though her parents’ home in Eugene, Oregon, was more than five hours’ distance to Megan’s in Seattle, she knew she could still put her finger in the air and draw each turn and bridge between this spot and the diner where she’d had her first job, the public library where she’d built dreams, and the bluff where she’d loitered on Saturday nights with the crowd who didn’t know how much she liked to read. This house had been the starting point for every quest her old self had followed, beginning right here from this driveway.

“Here’s the keys, so I won’t be barging in on you.”

Her mother’s arched eyebrows set off Megan’s internal alarms. It was the exact look that she used when asking if Megan had heard the latest episode of the Librarians Unscramble Sex Talk podcast. Megan always lied and said yes, but in the first five minutes of her mother’s retirement project, the woman who’d raised her had introduced the clitoris by pretending the organ was a new employee walking into human resources. Bad enough, but then the woman who’d packed her school lunches had proceeded to share an unforgettable limerick with her listeners.

There was an old lady from Eugene

Who took her car to be cleaned,

But during the service

She found her clitoris.

Oh, what a fine day to be seen!

After her mother’s felonious offense against poetry, Megan had been done with the LUST podcast for life, or at least until she became comfortable with listening to her mother say words likeclitorisandcunnilingusover public airwaves. So, eternity.

Her mother had almost reached the car, almost left. “Remember, ask for anything you want,” she called over her shoulder. Unlike her parents’ house, the car had air-conditioning, so the closed windows kept her father and daughter out of the continuing conversation. “And follow all my instructions!”

“I’ll make sure to.” She lifted her hand and ignored the weird tightness in her chest as she watched her father reverse out of the driveway, maybe for the last time. In case Callie turned around, she waved until the vehicle disappeared.

Alone, finally alone, a situation that the pandemic year of working from home with an elementary schooler had caused her to cherish more than she could have ever imagined.

She turned toward the front door, which her mother enjoyed repainting annually in glossy colors that contrasted with the beige siding and black window shutters. Today, the door was a terracotta color, like roof tiles in the Southwest, and the century-old window reflected an undulating, semitransparent version of the lush yard. In their new active retirement community, her mother could decorate the balcony, but not change the color of the outside-facing doors, which meant this warm orange glow was destined to be the last chosen color.

Damn it.This wasn’t the last time she’d be in the front yard, the last slug-eaten hosta leaves that she’d see, and certainlynotthe last time she’d walk up the steps and through this front door, not even close, not with movers to supervise and her own sorting to do.

Normally, she’d leave the door open and let the latched screen admit a cross-breeze, but the outside air already felt warmer than the traces of overnight cool lingering in the dim interior. Going upstairs, the treads creaked beneath her running shoes, and bare planks in the hall gleamed where her parents had taken up the carpet runner.

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