Page 32 of Absolution

I collapsed on the bed without pulling back the covers. I didn’t cry. I didn’t think. I just... stopped.

At some point, someone must’ve come in. Because when I came to again, hours later, I was covered in a thick quilt. My mother’s quilt. The one with the green-and-white patchwork. It smelled like her. Lavender and starch and home.

After that, the days blurred together.

I think Marianne and Cory took time off work. I don’t remember asking them to, but they were there. In the house. Somewhere. Sometimes I could hear them talking softly in the kitchen, or opening drawers, going through closets, boxing up parts of her life.

I didn’t help. Most of the time I stayed in bed.

When I had the energy, I dragged myself down the hall and sat on the living room couch. I didn’t speak much. Just sat there, wrapped in her quilt, watching the dust float in the sunlight.

Every now and then I’d FaceTime the kids using my siblings’ phones. Try to smile. Ask about their day. Tell them I missed them.

But mostly, I slept.

Not because I wasn’t thinking, but because I couldn’t anymore. Everything hurt. My body, my heart, my mind. Grief sat on my chest like a brick I couldn’t move.

I know Kyle was angry. I could hear it in his voice every time we spoke. I just didn’t have anything left to give.

Not to him. Not to anyone.

And maybe that makes me selfish. Maybe it makes me a bad mother. But I couldn’t pretend anymore. I needed to stop pretending.

Even if it meant the whole world kept spinning without me.

I’m sitting on the sofa, barely upright, when I hear Marianne call out from the attic. “We found more boxes!”

I don’t move. Just pull the quilt tighter over my shoulders and watch through the open door as she and Cory come downstairs with their arms full.

“Most of this is old tax stuff,” Cory mutters, dropping his load onto the coffee table. “But this one-” he lifts a smaller, less dusty box with faded writing on the side “-this one says ‘Memories.’”

Marianne kneels beside it, carefully opening the flaps. The air smells like cedar and time. She peels back layers of yellowed tissue paper and gasps.

“Scrapbooks,” she says, her voice cracking a little.

They’re thick, beautifully decorated, each one labelled in curling script.Jemma.Iris.Levi.

“She made one for each of them,” Marianne whispers, brushing her fingers over the covers. “She must’ve spent hours on this.”

She pulls one open, flipping to a spread with glittering stickers and careful handwriting.

“Oh, this is their third birthday party,” she says, smiling gently. “Remember how she rented that bouncy castle? Even though it rained?”

Cory chuckles, but it’s soft. Tender. “Dad said she was gonna break a hip jumping on it with the kids.”

At the bottom of the box, reaching under a folded blanket and an old Valentine’s Day card, Marianne’s hand stills. She pulls out a small photo frame, wrapped in bubble wrap, like it’s more fragile than the rest. Unwrapping it carefully, her breath catches.

“Oh.”

Cory leans over her shoulder. His face changes too.

Neither of them says anything right away. Then, like they’ve silently agreed, they come and sit on either side of me.

Marianne places the frame in my lap.

I look down.

And the second I see it, I know.

---