Laura later told me, “I didn’t know whether to laugh or pray.”
She called Cassandra and demanded that Tyler be forbidden from seeing my children. Cassandra refused. By then she and Brent were sleeping in separate rooms, which Brent blamed on me, the weather, inflation, and “female groupthink,” in that order.
Meanwhile, my father began packing.
Not dramatically. Not with the grand gestures of a man determined to prove suffering. He packed quietly. He labeled boxes in black marker: kitchen, garage, taxes, Rose. He sent me photographs of items he thought belonged to me or the kids.
Do you want Grandma’s quilt?
Yes.
The wooden recipe box?
Yes.
Your old school awards?
No.
You sure?
Very.
He found things my mother had kept and things she had hidden. Birthday cards I had made her in elementary school. School portraits still in envelopes. A clay handprint I had given her when I was six, tucked behind a stack of Brent’s baseball trophies.
