I booked a room at a Marriott two miles from the airport using the last of my phone battery. It cost $189 for the night. I took an Uber for $14, ate a nineteen-dollar turkey club from room service, plugged in my phone, and slept nine hours straight.
When I woke up, I lay in that crisp white hotel bed and stared at the ceiling for a long time.
I didn’t feel angry. That was the strange part. I felt light, like I’d been carrying a backpack full of bricks for two years and somebody had finally cut the straps.
I called Connor at eight in the morning.
“He forgot,” I told him. “Five hours. He was at a party.”
Connor was quiet for a second. “Where are you?”
“A Marriott by the airport.”
“Good. Stay there.” I heard him moving around. “Listen, my company manages a building in Grandview. There’s a studio apartment that just opened up. Six-forty a month. Clean, quiet, washer and dryer in the building. You want to see it?”
I thought about Dad’s house. The LIVE LAUGH LOVE canvas. The thermostat at seventy-four. Britney’s laugh echoing down the hallway at midnight.
“Yeah,” I said. “I want to see it.”
I signed the lease three days later. A twelve-month lease at $640 a month, plus a $640 security deposit. I paid the first month and the deposit with my debit card. The leasing agent handed me two silver keys on a ring, and I held them in my palm like they were made of gold.
Clean floors. White walls. A kitchen the size of a closet, but my kitchen. My own keys. Nobody waiting for me to cover their bills.
I drove to Dad’s house on a Tuesday afternoon when I knew Travis would be at a showing and Britney would be at work. I packed my clothes, my laptop, my books, and a few things from my room. Then I went out to the garage and got Dad’s green tackle box. I took the framed PAID IN FULL letter out from behind a stack of Britney’s boxes in the hall closet.
On the way out, I stopped in the backyard.
Dad’s tomato plants were dead. Brown, shriveled stalks hung off their wire cages. The soil was cracked and dry. Nobody had watered them in two weeks.
I stood there a long time.
Then I got in my car and drove to my new apartment.
Four days passed before Travis texted me. It wasn’t to ask where I was.
Yo did you pay the electric bill? Got a notice on the door.
I stared at the message for a full minute.
The electric account was in my name. I’d set it up after Dad died, because Travis’s credit was too low for the utility company to open an account without a $300 deposit. I’d been paying it every month on autopay.
That morning I’d canceled the autopay.
Handle it, I typed back.
I also called American Electric Power and asked how to take my name off the account at the house, since I no longer lived there. The woman on the phone was very kind.
“We can close the account in your name,” she said. “If someone else is living at the property, they’ll need to open a new account in their own name. We’ll send a notice to the address so service isn’t interrupted without warning.”
“Please do that,” I said.
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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