I pulled up the cruise line website and filtered by departure date. There was a sailing out of Miami on December 30th, five nights, returning January 4th. New Year’s Eve on the water, somewhere between the Bahamas and open sea. The cabin was small, but the balcony faced east toward the sunrise. The price was almost exactly what I had paid in car insurance premiums for Corbin and Blythe over the past eight months.
I entered my card number. I did not hesitate. The confirmation screen appeared. Booking confirmed. Welcome aboard, Mrs. Sterling. We look forward to celebrating the New Year with you.
Doris read it over my shoulder. “You know,” she said, “I always thought Gerald would have liked a cruise.”
“He would have hated it,” I said. “He got seasick on the Staten Island Ferry.”
We both laughed, and the sound of it filled the kitchen in a way it hadn’t in a long time.
I closed the laptop and looked at Doris. “I also need six boxes,” I said. “Different sizes. Each one small enough to fit inside the next. And I need to find a party supply store that carries those plastic kazoos. The neon ones they hand out at children’s birthday parties.”
Doris studied my face carefully. A slow smile crossed hers. “Lavinia Sterling,” she said, “what exactly are you planning?”
I picked up my cold mug of tea, stood up from the table, and walked to the kitchen window. Outside, the hydrangeas were still standing in the pale winter light, patient and unhurried.
“A proper send-off,” I said.
The five weeks between that Sunday morning and New Year’s Eve passed away the way December always did, quickly and with a great deal of noise from other people. I packed a little each day. Not frantically. Not in one exhausting push. But steadily and without sentiment.
A box of books here. The good china wrapped in dish towels and stacked near the garage door. Gerald’s old armchair, which I had kept for years more out of habit than love, finally loaded into Doris’s truck and driven to the storage unit on Whitfield Road. Each evening, the house felt a little lighter. Each morning, I woke up without the tight feeling in my chest that had lived there unacknowledged for longer than I cared to admit.
Corbin called on a Tuesday in the second week. “Mom, I just wanted to check in,” he said, which meant he wanted to complain. I’d learned to hear the difference. He spent eleven minutes telling me about a project deadline his manager had moved up without warning, a colleague who had taken credit for his work in a team meeting, and the inexplicable price of parking near his office building. I listened. I made the appropriate sounds. When he ran out of steam, he said, “Anyway, I should let you go.” And that was the end of it. He didn’t ask how I was. He didn’t ask what my plans were for the holiday. He didn’t ask anything at all. I said, “Take care of yourself, honey,” and meant it, and put the phone down and went back to wrapping picture frames in newspaper.
He called again on a Thursday in the fourth week. This time his voice carried a different kind of energy. Lighter. More purposeful. “Mom, quick question. Do you think you could pick up some extra bath towels before you leave? Blythe wants everyone to have fresh ones. You know how her mother is about that kind of thing.”
I pressed my lips together. Outside the kitchen window, a cardinal landed on the bare branch of the oak tree and sat there, bright red against the gray December sky.
“I’ll take care of it, honey,” I said.
I wrote it on the notepad beside the phone. Then I drew a single line through it.
The following Saturday, I drove to the party supply store on Clement Avenue. The young man restocking the balloon section looked up when I came in.
“Can I help you find something?”
“Kazoos,” I said. “The plastic ones. Neon colors, if you have them.”
He blinked. “Like for a kids’ party?”
“Something like that.”
He led me to a shelf near the back. I found exactly what I needed. Fifteen plastic kazoos in bright neon green, individually wrapped, the kind given out at children’s birthday parties and immediately confiscated by tired parents. I set them in my basket without ceremony.
From there, I drove to the dollar store on Route 9 and spent twenty minutes selecting six cardboard boxes in descending sizes, each one small enough to nest inside the next. The largest was roughly the size of a laundry basket. The smallest could have held a piece of jewelry.
My last stop was the FedEx office on Garrison Street, where a young woman with reading glasses pushed up on her forehead helped me print a single sheet of paper. On it was a reservation confirmation for a room at the Ridgeway Motor Inn, forty-two miles from my house, off Exit 14 on the Interstate. Two bunk beds. Maximum occupancy, four persons. Complimentary continental breakfast from 7 to 9 a.m. Booked under the name Blythe Calloway. Paid in full.
“Do you want it laminated?” the young woman asked.
“No,” I said. “It will only need to last one evening.”
On my way home, I stopped at Ray Kowalski’s house. Ray had lived next door for twenty-two years, ever since he and his wife had moved in the summer Corbin started middle school. He was sixty-five, recently retired from forty years as a licensed electrician, and possessed of the particular kind of patience that comes from spending four decades fixing problems other people had created through carelessness.
He answered the door in his flannel shirt and reading glasses with a mug of coffee in his hand. “Lavinia,” he said. “Everything all right?”
“I need a favor,” I told him. “I’ll be away over New Year’s weekend. I wanted to let the HOA patrol know in advance that I won’t be home, and that any vehicles parked on my grass or blocking the sidewalk after eight p.m. should be treated as unauthorized and reported for towing. Section 4.2 of the community guidelines covers it.”
Ray regarded me steadily over the rim of his mug. He had watched Blythe park her Lexus directly on top of my hydrangeas at least four times, something he had never mentioned to me but which I had seen him clock with that same steady gaze.
“I can make sure the patrol has it in writing,” he said. “Consider it done.”
“Thank you, Ray.”
He nodded once. Then, just as I turned to leave, he said, “You know, I always thought that daughter-in-law of yours had a remarkable talent for parking in the exact wrong place.”
I smiled at him over my shoulder. “So did I, Ray. So did I.”
That evening, I sat at the kitchen table and assembled the boxes one layer at a time. Into the smallest, I placed what I had prepared. A single folded sheet of paper and something small enough to fit in a child’s hand. I sealed it with packing tape, then slid it into the next box, and the next, working outward until the largest box sat closed and solid on the table in front of me.
I uncapped a black marker and wrote across the top in large, even letters: For Blythe and Corbin. Happy New Year.
I set the marker down. I looked at what I had made. Then I turned off the kitchen light and went to bed. And I slept better than I had in years.
Sophia Rivers is an experienced News Content Editor with a sharp eye for detail and a passion for delivering accurate and engaging news stories. At TheArchivists, she specializes in curating, editing, and presenting news content that informs and resonates with a global audience.
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