The Affair

by J. L. Berg

  “So, you decided to tear apart the house?”

  I wanted to take it back instantly, especially when her eyes met mine and I could see the pain so deeply etched inside.

  Had I caused that? Or had it already been there?

  These days, I couldn’t tell.

  “I thought maybe Goodwill could use some of your father’s clothes, and then I realized I still had most of Nana’s things in here, but I …” Her voice trailed off.

  But once she started, she couldn’t go through with any of it.

  That was what she wanted to say.

  It was why most of my grandmother’s things had stayed locked up in this room, untouched, for over a decade.

  It hurt too much. My mom was a decisive planner, but it didn’t mean she had less of a heart. If anything, hers was a bit bigger than most … which only made the grief that much harder to bear.

  “Your nana was quite the beautiful young lady,” she said, holding up an old photograph for me to look at.

  I took it from her hands and immediately smiled.

  “She really was,” I replied, my finger running along the tattered edge of the old wedding photo. “You want me to organize these for you?” I asked, remembering she had once said something about doing it.

  She waved her hand in a dismissive sort of way. “Maybe later. Why don’t we go make some dinner and then maybe we can catch up on the ledgers?”

  “Sure,” I agreed. “Sounds like a plan.”

  She put down some of the photos she had in her hand, but getting out of the clutter she’d piled around herself was no easy task, and clearly, she needed help to find a way out.

  Chuckling, I stepped forward and offered my assistance. “Hold on, Mom. Let me dig a path for you.”

  She waited as I began moving things around to make room for her in the tiny space. Taking stacks of photo boxes and placing them back in the closet was the first step. The second was relocating the heavy boxes that surrounded the bed.

  “Did you lift these yourself?” I asked.

  Her silence spoke volumes.

  Before she had the chance to utter an apology for her poor life choices, I noticed something familiar peeking out of one of the boxes.

  “Is that what I think it is?” I asked, pulling on one of the cardboard flaps to reveal something I hadn’t seen since childhood.

  A sad smile spread across my mom’s face as she confirmed my suspicions. “Nana’s journal. Well, one of them. There are a ton of boxes filled with them.”

  I pulled the large black binder into my hands and felt the weight of it. How many times had I watched her writing at night, neatly recording the events of her day onto those plain white sheets of notebook paper?

  “Look at all these entries!” I said, plopping down on the floor so I could open the binder and read a few.

  Sunday, March 12, 1989

  Cloudy

  High 43, Low 36

  Went to church and made dinner. Read the paper. After dinner, I embroidered. Gertrude stopped by with another quilt block for the senior citizen quilt. After supper, I finished the daily and started another.

  “What was the daily?” I asked my mother.

  Her smile was reminiscent. “Crossword puzzle,” she explained. “She used to do the one in the local paper every day.”

  I flipped through a couple more.

  Sunday, May 2, 1990

  Partly Sunny

  High 54, Low 44

  Went to church. After dinner, I washed two loads of clothes, read the paper and made out monthly checks. Put some mothballs in the garden. Walked ten blocks after supper. Finished daily.

  “Wow, Nana’s life really didn’t change much from year to year, did it?”

  I waited for her to respond, but instead, I looked up and found my mother staring at the binder, her eyes vacant and cold.

  “Mom?”

  She shook her head a little and seemed to come out of it. “Dinner?”

  “Yeah,” I answered, a bit taken aback. “You okay?”

  “Just hungry. Do you want to order a pizza?” she asked, blazing past me, out the door.

  “Pizza?”

  “Yeah, there’s that new place that everyone is talking about.”

  I tried to not roll my eyes.

  “Oh, right,” I answered. “The place with the flat screens?”

  “Mmhmm …”

  I guessed we were back to one-worded answers again.

  “They don’t have delivery yet. Did you want to go out?”

  I had no idea where she was going with this. We always ordered from the same place. Or we had since I moved in a year ago. If anything, my mom was a creature of habit.

  “No,” she hollered from somewhere in the house. “I just thought you could pick something up.”

  Staring down at the journal, I let out a sigh.

  “Okay,” I replied, trying not to read too much into the madness that was my mom these days.

  She’d just lost her husband. She was allowed to get pizza from somewhere new even if it meant I had to go get it for her.

  “Were you this way when Papa died?” I found myself saying to the endless pages before me. Flipping through another few pages, I found one that mentioned my grandfather. It took longer than I’d expected.

  Saturday, May 7, 1990

  Partly Sunny

  High 54, Low 43

  Went downtown for groceries and mail. Did some kitchen work. After dinner, I went to the nursing home but didn’t stay long. George wasn’t himself today. After supper, I went to check on William next door. Crocheted a while.

  For most of my life, my Papa, George, had been in a nursing home. When I was around the age of ten, he had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, and when things had gotten too difficult for him to live at home, the decision had been made to have him put in around-the-clock care.

  Growing up, I hadn’t known much about it, but I had known my nana visited him constantly. Religiously. Faithfully.

  For ten long years.

  Running my fingers across the page, I felt her strength in the words she had written. She’d supported him without fail.

  I could do the same.

  Standing up, I set the book aside, figuring I could put it away later, and headed for the front door.

  I had a pizza to get.

  Pushing my way through the front door, I juggled the pizza boxes and bags and called out, trying not to drop everything in my hands, “Hey, Mom, I’m home. Hope you’re hungry!”

  Considering how long I’d been gone, I was just hoping, at this point, she was still awake.

  The infamous new pizza place, Joe’s, had been crammed with locals tonight, all eager to sit in its shiny, new seats and watch whatever was playing on all those flat screens everyone couldn’t stop talking about.

  Unfortunately for Joe and his new employees, I wasn’t sure they had anticipated the frenzy a new restaurant could bring to a small town like Pine Hurst. If you drove an hour and a half down the road to Asheville, there was probably a place like this on every corner, but for us, the excitement of a new restaurant only came once in a blue moon, and when it did … we showed up.

  Stepping into the kitchen, my arms still laden with boxes and bags, I found my mom. She was sitting at the kitchen table with her head bent forward as she softly spoke into her ancient flip phone.

  “Okay, yep. I love you too,” she said to whomever she was speaking to. “Talk to you soon. Buh-bye.”

  She quickly hung up and looked up at me, her face somewhat surprised. “Are we having company?”

  At first, I didn’t make the connection, but then I saw her peering at the large amount of food in my hands. “Oh, no,” I answered. “The pizza place was seriously behind in their orders. A few people left before their pizzas were done, and rather than toss them, they gave them to me for being so patient. I figured we could graze on them for the next day or so.”

  “That was nice of them,” she replied as I began setting things down.


  “Who were you talking to on the phone?” I asked. Placing the extras I’d received directly into the fridge, I saved the pepperoni—my mom’s favorite—and placed it on the table before going back for a few other things.

  “Your brother,” she answered, giving no further details.

  “Did he make it back home okay?”

  “Yes, all four of them are settling back into their normal routine very nicely.”

  “That’s good.” I grabbed some plates for the two of us and set them down on the small table. Then, I went back for glasses. Taking the seat across from her, I opened the pizza box and pulled two slices out—one for her and one for me.

  And then I waited.

  “Mom?” I finally said quietly when I noticed her staring at the wall behind me. “Do you want me to say grace?”

  “Oh, yes. That would be nice.”

  I couldn’t remember the last time I’d actually done so, but I could give it a go. After all, we’d been saying the same one forever. Bowing my head, I closed my eyes and repeated the prayer I’d been taught as a child.

  “God is great; God is good. Let us thank him for our food. By his hands, we are fed. Let us thank him for our—”

  “I’m moving to Charleston,” my mother blurted out before I had a chance to finish the prayer, making my eyes immediately fly open.

  “What?”

  Her expression was unreadable, like she was both excited and full of anguish at the same time.

  “I’m moving—”

  “I heard what you said,” I explained. “I just don’t understand what you’re talking about, Mom. Are you feeling okay?”

  Were hysteria and delusions symptoms of grief? Maybe I should call her doctor.

  “Jack and I have been talking about it for some time.”

  “Jack? You’ve been talking to Jack about this?” I felt a wave of betrayal settle around me. “For how long?”

  My brother had been here for almost a week, and he hadn’t mentioned a thing to me about my mother moving, especially not to another state.

  With him.

  “A few months ago,” she answered.

  “A few months …” I was bewildered. Shocked.

  “Jack has that great big house down there on the water, and now that he has two little ones and one on the way”—Bethany was pregnant again?—“they could use the extra help.”

  “Mom,” I began, trying to remain as calm and clearheaded as I could under the circumstances. “Daddy just died. The flowers from his funeral are still in the dining room. Are you sure you’re not just reacting to the pain and grief? Maybe you should just sit back and give it some time—”

  “I don’t need time,” she answered firmly, her gaze set on mine. “I need a change. I need to feel useful. Otherwise, I’ll be just like her—”

  “Just like who?” I asked.

  “My mother,” she explained. “Writing in a journal, year after year, with little to say … my life just an endless monotony of nothing.”

  I opened my mouth to argue one of the many other points I’d managed to think up in the limited time I’d been given, but she held her hand up to stop me.

  “I’ve made all the arrangements. I’m flying out at the end of the week. What I can’t take with me, Jack will arrange to have sent. I am meeting with the family lawyer tomorrow. The house and store are both yours.”

  My eyes widened. “Mom—”

  “I know it’s a lot.”

  “A lot? A lot would be you refusing to get out of bed for a month, but this? This is maddening. You can’t just give me the house and the store. They’re half Jack’s. Surely, he—”

  “He’s agreed. He doesn’t want them.”

  “Of course he doesn’t,” I said, tears stinging my eyes. “He already has everything he wants anyway.”

  And now, he has you …

  “I know this is a change for you. I know it’s not what you expected. But I have faith you’ll do what is right. Keep the house, or don’t. The same goes for the shop.”

  She didn’t care about the shop anymore?

  My nose felt runny, my eyes burned, and I hated myself for it. I couldn’t tell which one of us was being selfish—her or me—but I knew one thing.

  I wasn’t hungry anymore.

  “I’m gonna go to bed,” I announced, rising from my spot at the table.

  Her face fell, and I could see that I’d upset her.

  For the past year, it had been my job to make her feel better.

  But not anymore.

  She didn’t need me.

  She was moving on, and I guessed, somehow, I had to find a way to do the same.

  Chapter Three

  I’d like to say I’d handled my mom’s departure with all the grace and maturity my thirty-three years on this Earth had afforded me, but unfortunately, I’d acted more like an overgrown toddler throwing a temper tantrum.

  When that fateful Friday arrived, I’d sat in my room and sulked as a hired driver came and whisked my mother away to her new life. I’d looked out the window as the sleek black car drove off—something else my brother had arranged—and I’d wondered, is she doing the same?

  Was she looking back and reflecting on all the memories she was leaving behind?

  Or was she just breathing a sigh of relief to be rid of it all? The pain, the emptiness … the constant reminders.

  Maybe, someday, I’d ask her, but for now, I had a business to run.

  Since I’d been running mostly everything—business-wise—on my own since my father got ill, I hadn’t pressed Mom for many details regarding the day to day operations of the store before she left. I’d just assumed I had most of it under control.

  Unfortunately, I came to learn during my first week as official owner that there were quite a number of things my mother had still been handling behind the scenes that she’d failed to mention. Like taxes for instance.

  I did the daily bookkeeping, which was a nightmare in itself since we’d started renting space to local vendors, but the actual filing part? I hadn’t realized my mom had been sending off those quarterly payments, even while taking care of my father.

  It was something I should have been taking care of.

  She’d also managed to keep us well stocked in coffee supplies all the way up until today when the nifty little coffee pods I so loved magically ran out.

  “Well, crap,” I said to no one as I looked at the empty box and mentally huffed.

  Holding my wrist to my bleary, bloodshot eyes, I noted the time on my watch. Eight thirty. Was half an hour enough time to run down to the market and grab coffee supplies? I guessed I’d find out because this girl could not run properly without caffeine in the morning.

  Feeling another yawn coming on, I grabbed my purse from the counter and the Help Wanted sign I had planned on putting up later today and stepped out into the cold autumn air.

  After I locked up, I taped the sign up on the door and turned, nearly running into the petite blonde who was walking toward me.

  “Oh, hey, Elle!”

  Standing there was Candace Drake. I couldn’t help but mentally groan. It wasn’t that I disliked Candace. I actually considered her a bit of a friend. But this early? With no coffee?

  Candace was a former cheerleader and lived every day like she was still in a high pony, flashing those pom-poms for the crowd. And that never-ending well of energy was natural—no caffeine needed for this one.

  “Hey, Candace!” I said, trying to muster all the pep I could this early in the morning.

  “I’m so glad I caught you!” She beamed, her megawatt smile nearly blinding me. “I wanted to see if I could stop by later and drop off some new items I did for fall.”

  Feeling grateful she wasn’t here to gab or gossip, I nodded my head. “Sure, that’d be great. We’re mostly sold out of the things you brought over last week. Those mugs were a big hit!”

  Her eyes lit up, and she furiously clapped her hands together. “That’s fantas
tic! Okay, I’ll see you later! Oh, and good luck finding someone!” she said, pointing to my sign.

  I waved good-bye, thanking her, and quickly checked my watch. That little chat with Candace cost me some of my precious coffee time, and now, I was tasked with a dilemma—walk all the way down to the corner market to get coffee pods and risk opening late or go to the café, which was closer but also right next to my ex’s house.

  The place I avoided like the plague.

  I looked down the street toward the market, biting my lip at the idea of opening late. I knew the chances of someone showing up at nine in the morning were slim, but I also knew if I opened late, my intestines could very well burst right through my abdomen from the sheer anxiety coursing through my body.

  I hated being late to anything. It went along with the whole anal-retentive personality I had going. So, clearly, the café would be the winner today. With any luck, I could just sprint down the street—I was in a hurry after all—and completely ignore the house that shall not be named.

  Like it didn’t even exist.

  It had been ages since my feet graced the concrete of this street.

  A year ago, I used to walk this familiar path several times a day. I could count the steps between our front door and the antique store and the café. It was the perfect little house, right in the middle of town.

  My parents’ house, on the other hand, was on the outskirts, and in order to get anywhere, you had to drive. I hated that, especially as a kid. When you were little, you wanted instant gratification, and being even ten minutes from friends and fun was too much. I hadn’t lost that feeling when I got older, so being able to walk to the market for a head of lettuce or walk hand in hand with my husband to the café for an impromptu brunch, that was my idea of bliss.

  Or at least, it had been.

  Now, the little white house was a stark reminder of everything I’d had. And lost.

  My heart began to race when I got within eyesight of it. I saw the mailbox first—the royal blue I’d chosen that first year of marriage. I’d agonized for days over the perfect shade. Reed had laughed, not understanding the difference between any of them.