Chapter 16

Moving day.

It was time to move to our new home. My mother’s new home at least.

I moved mechanically as I stuffed the last of my things into boxes, ready to load them in the moving van.

I looked heavenward as a small tear threatened to spill out of my eyes.

I shouldn’t be crying. I shouldn’t be crying. I repeated the mantra in my head.

In no time, the boxes that contained everything I knew, all of my childhood and adolescent memories, were being stuffed into the moving van.

I swallowed the lemon-sized ball in my throat, as I stared at the now empty space that was once my home, ready to be occupied by its new owners.

I wasn’t supposed to feel bad. My mother was beginning a new chapter of her life, and it was my duty as her lovely daughter to follow her, but for the first time, I regretted my decision to take a gap year.

I didn’t want to be here when all of ours and whatever memories I had of my father would be packed up in boxes.

Even though my father hadn’t moved here with us because