My Family Tried to Move Into My Mountain House Without Asking

 

I was halfway down the mountain road when Mrs. Rowan called, and the way her voice sounded before she even finished her first sentence told me everything I needed to know about what I was driving back to.

“Mara, honey,” she said, speaking in that careful, lowered register people use wADVERTISEMENT

truck in your driveway. Your parents are here. And your sister. And the kids.”

She hesitated. “They said you knew.”

I pulled the car to the gravel shoulder and sat there with the engine running and the phone against my ear, and I did not say anything for a long moment because the part of my brain responsible for language was temporarily occupied with continue reading …hen they are delivering news they did not choose. “There’s a moving continue reading …

trying to process what my ears had just delivered.

“Your mama told the movers it’s family property,” Mrs. Rowan continued, almost apologetic. “They’re carrying boxes inside.”

I put the car back in drive.

The cabin came into view over the last rise, framed by the sharp silhouettes of the Colorado pines, and the first thing I saw was the truck, white and continue reading …

enormous, its rear door rolled up, a metal ramp angled down to the gravel. Then the people. My mother directing the movers with her hand on her hip, her posture the posture of a woman who has made a decision and is now in the administrative phase of it. My father leaning against the truck with his arms crossed as if supervising a renovation. My older continue reading …

sister Lydia carrying a cardboard box while her kids, Owen and Piper, darted around the yard, kicking pinecones and laughing the easy laugh of children who have been told this is an adventure.

They all looked entirely at home.

I got out of the car.

My mother saw me and smiled the way you smile when someone shows up right on time.

“There she is! Perfect continue reading 

timing. We need to get the heavy stuff in first.”

I had been on the road for four hours and I had not slept well the night before and I was still carrying the particular fatigue of a work week that had ended with too many unresolved problems, and I stood in my own driveway looking at my family arranged across my property like furniture and I tried to continue reading …

 …