Chapter Text
His mom had warned him she’d turned the house’s heating down as low as she could without causing damage. It had gotten really cold overnight, though, so it still felt good once he walked through the door. He started to kick off his shoes and shuck his coat, but she stopped him. “You’ll want those back on before too long. Besides, that’s something you do when you’re at home.”
“But this is home,” Jamie pointed out. “It’s a bit weird to see it all empty like this, but it’s still where we live. Or where we used to.” What were you supposed to call one of your old houses? He’d never moved before, until earlier this month. “I’m going to miss it.”
“I’ll miss it, too,” said Mom softly. “There are an awful lot of memories here.”
Was she going to get mushy? Jamie watched her for a moment before deciding she wasn’t. Besides, if she really missed it that badly, she could have just had Lee move in once everyone knew they were married. He shook his head. It was probably a good thing that wasn’t going to happen. This house belonged not just to Mom and him, but to Grandma and Phillip too. He hated leaving it, but it made sense to change their home after so many changes to their family.
Besides, Lee’s decorations were way cooler than Mom’s. Not that he’d ever admit that to her, of course. Some things were just too private to say out loud, even to your mom.
“What’s going to happen next?” he asked her instead.
“Well, the realtor’s already showed it to a couple of people, but they decided it wasn’t what they were looking for. It’s still good news, though, because showings are usually pretty slow around the holidays. If we got some already, it means we might get a lot more after New Year’s. Now that we’ve fixed those doors that were closing funny, he thinks it won’t take too long before I get an offer.”
“An offer?”
“From someone who decides they do want to buy it. That’s how it works,” she explained. “If someone decides they want it, they’ll make me an offer. Then I’ll decide if I want to say yes or no, or if I want to negotiate.” She laughed softly. “The process is the same as when your dad and I first bought this house, but you won’t remember that. You were barely a year old when we moved in.”
He’d lost count of the number of times she’d told him that story, but right now didn’t seem like a good time to remind her. Parents could be weird sometimes.
Take earlier this morning, for example. After dinner last night, they’d started a game of Monopoly and they’d all ended falling asleep, right there in Dad and Carrie’s living room, before they finished. They’d woken up after the sun was up, looked around, laughed, and started opening the rest of their presents.
Carrie had put her hand to her mouth when she opened one of them, refusing to take it all the way out of its box. Dad, seeing what was in it, turned red as a beet, and they’d started speaking French at each other. After a few exchanged sentences, Lee had joined the conversation with some comment that made all three of them laugh pretty hard. Jamie didn’t think that was very nice, talking in French when they knew he and his mom couldn’t understand.
But Mom had been laughing, too. “All right!” she’d cried. “That’s enough. I shouldn’t have to learn French just to understand my own family!”
His dad had looked at Carrie. “Looks like our secret code’s blown.”
Her smile had been sweet, but her eyes had danced with merriment and mischief. “I told you I’d teach you Kreyól if you asked me to.”
Dad had made one more comment in French, making all three of them laugh again, before scooting over to sit next to Jamie. “Why don’t I start teaching you the French words for all these presents of yours.”
Jamie was sure he wouldn’t remember them all, but it had been a fun conversation, especially after his mom had sheepishly admitted she’d forgotten all the French she’d taken in high school.
“I suppose,” she’d said, “I probably should try and learn it again. Especially with some of the things I’ve been transcribing lately.”
“Mom!” he’d begun. “Couldn’t you wait until I’m in high school and we can learn it together?”
Lee had given Mom a significant look. “Sounds like a good idea to me. Besides, that way I can teach you the best parts of French myself.”
At that, his mom had turned the same color of red that his dad had been at first. Dad and Carrie had started laughing so hard they’d doubled over.
“Jamie?”
Oh. He’d been staring at the empty bookshelves a little too long. There was nothing there to see anymore. “Sorry, Mom. Did you ask me something?”
“Yes,” she answered, though she didn’t seem upset about him not listening. “I just want to satisfy my own curiosity. Why did you come back here the day you got kidnapped? There wasn’t anything you could take with you.”
Jamie briefly wished at least one piece of furniture might still be in here, since it was kind of awkward to shuffle your feet in front of your mom without something to lean on or hide behind. “I don’t know. I don’t even really know why I came here except that I just — I just really had been missing this house, and remembering everything the way it had been, and I’d wanted it all to come back for a while. Kind of stupid, really, but Phillip’s not here to call me a worm brain anymore.”
“Small favors,” his mother replied gently. “But it wasn’t stupid. In fact, it sounds pretty normal to me. There’s a lot here worth missing, even with the house completely empty.” She turned in a circle, right there while they were standing in the den, and when she was done her expression was a little sadder. “Missing everything just reminds us how much we loved them.”
“I’d probably have gone home before dark,” he admitted. “Maybe even before you guys knew I’d skipped school. I mean, yeah, I planned it out and all that, but that was just so I wouldn’t get caught.” Jamie sighed. “Which I did anyway.”
“Were you inside when the HVA Irregulars caught you?”
“I hadn’t made it that far. Haven’t been upstairs since the day we moved the last of our stuff out.”
Mom pursed her lips. “You know what? I have an idea. Why don’t we go all the way up to the attic and then start working our way down, room by room, so we can say our last goodbyes. We’ll tell each individual room our favorite memory from it. We can do the garage and gazebo, too.”
It sounded awfully silly to Jamie, but then again, it might be fun. “Sure. But things don’t seem so bad now. We were happy here, but we were happy this morning, too.”
“You think so?”
“Yeah,” he told her. “It was different. I’ve thought about it, though, and I bet it would’ve gotten different here too, eventually. Especially once Phillip started driving.”
“It probably would have,” she answered. “Although we’d have had more time to prepare. Still, different isn’t always bad.”
Jamie considered that for a second. “No. And it felt good to be so happy this morning. Maybe…maybe we’ll find more ways to be happy again this next year. The five of us, I mean.”
His mom smiled. “I’d like to think so.” Then she held out her hand and they went up the stairs together for the last time.