Page 7 of Echoes

“Mom!”

“It’s okay. My fault,” Lydia said and rubbed Eliza’s back. “Can I help carry anything?”

“Yes. Whatever Eliza might need help with, if you don’t mind.”

“Today?” Eliza asked her mother.

“Please,” her mom said. “I’m paying for the unit already, and I have to be out of this house within the next two weeks. I have a close date with the couple buying the house.”

“Wow. Okay. I didn’t realize it was that soon,” Eliza replied.

“I havemycar. More room,” Lydia suggested. “We can load stuff in it today, take it over, and come back for the rest if it all doesn’t fit.”

“Yeah, sure,” Eliza said absentmindedly.

“Good. I’m going to go lie down. The boxes are labeled in the basement,” her mother stated and left them alone in the kitchen.

The three of them were supposed to have lunch together, but her mother hadn’t gotten that far. She’d put out a bowl of chips and had planned to make sandwiches, but she’d only been able to handle chips. The bread was still in the bag, and the ingredients for the sandwiches were still in the fridge. Eliza wondered, not for the first time, if she’d ever get her mother back, the woman she’d known before that horrible night. It had been so many years, though, and her mom still seemed to be in shock. She hadn’t ever been able to go back to work full-time, so she’d worked for various companies part-time over the years since the murder and had used the money Eliza’s dad had left her to live off primarily and to put Eliza through college. Eliza wasn’t sure how her father had had so much money. His parents hadn’t been wealthy, and he’d had a government job that probably hadn’t paid much, but Eliza had never asked, and her mother had never volunteered the information. They hadn’t been super rich, but Eliza also hadn’t been deprived of anything growing up, either. Well, she’d wanted a mother who could be present in her life again, but monetarily, she’d had what she needed.

“Are you okay with this?” Lydia asked.

“Not really. But I don’t have much of a choice. She couldn’t even lift the sliced turkey out of the fridge. I doubt she can lift these boxes.”

“Has she talked to anyone since that last therapist?”

“No, but they have her on the numbing drugs,” Eliza reminded. “And while Ihatedthem, I think she likes it that way. They make her not have to feel the sadness.”

“Yeah, but she’s not really feelinganything.”

“The alternative is feeling the loss of her husband, and I think that’s too much for her.”

“But she has a daughter, El. She hasyou, and I’ve watched her not be there for you since we met. She couldn’t even show up to take pictures of you for the prom when we went together. And I know it’s not because she cares that you’re gay. She barely made it to your graduation and didn’t have a party for you like everyone else’s parents did.”

“That was only a few years after it happened,” Eliza defended.

“What’s her excuse now?” Lydia asked.

“Hey, I know it makes you mad sometimes. Trust me, it makesmemad, too. I actually knew who she wasbeforehe was killed, so it’s worse for me. I think about what kind of mom I had before he died, and it hurts that she can’t be that for me anymore, but there’s nothing I can do about it if she just wants to be numb.”

“Not all of those drugs are that bad. You told me that.”

“Yes, but the ones she’s onare, and I think she prefers it that way.”

When they arrived in the basement, Eliza looked around the room, which was larger than most basements in the area but unfinished and made of concrete walls and a matching floor with more than a few cracks in it now. The boxes were lining the back wall, so she nodded for them to head that way.

“I hate that you had to go through all that and that, in some ways, you still are,” Lydia shared.

“Me too. Really, though, I just miss him. He was the best dad. For her, I think it’s harder. They were high school sweethearts, kind of like you and me.”

“Only they worked out,” Lydia pointed out.

Eliza stopped walking then and said, “Yeah, that.” She swallowed before she continued, “She knew him at thirteen years old, and they were each other’s only.”

“Has she been with anyone serious since? I don’t think we’ve ever talked about that.”

“I don’t think she’s been on a single date, unless she just didn’t tell me about it; not even after I moved out for school. I also can’t imagine her dating in this state, and she’s been in this state since that night.”

“Where do you want to start?” Lydia asked as they took in the rows of stuff along the back wall, stacked two to three boxes high.