She hasn’t been back to The Heights since she and her sister packed their childhood into boxes and garbage bags.
She tried to keep a level head that long weekend almost two decades ago, but sentimentality kept seeping in, much like the damaging spring thaws that had infiltrated fissures in the foundation of their childhood home, only to later freeze and crack the stone.
She remembers warning Rowan that the house wasn’t going to be an easy sell between the structural damage, the cosmetic issues, and the location. Rowan disagreed. Surprise, surprise.
“A lot of -people want fixer--uppers,” she said, and she was right about that. The -couple who bought their parents’ Dutch Colonial were planning a complete renovation.
Parked at the curb, Noreen can’t tell what went on inside, but the outside looks exactly the same, other than having gone from white with black shutters to gray with dark blue shutters. She approves of the new paint scheme, but the maroon bow on the door wreath clashes, and the lawn is patchy even for December.
She sits staring at the house, lost in her memories of that final day there with her sister. Noreen had long dreamed of creating order from that household chaos, but when the time arrived, she was unexpectedly emotional—-and of course, frustrated by her sister, who was, well, chaos incarnate.
Standing on a wobbly chair in the kitchen, Rowan reminisced about every damned thing she pulled from the cupboard. She wanted to keep it all—-or wanted Noreen to.
“No room,” Noreen said to just about everything.
“You’re kidding, right? Your kitchen is five times the size of mine. I’m the one who has no room.”
Rowan protested about everything she put into the discard carton, even a noticeably chipped red pitcher. “Don’t you remember how Mom always made us homemade lemonade in that on hot summer days?”
“I remember her making it from a powdered mix in one of those.” Noreen pointed at a -couple of dime store plastic pitchers they’d already tossed into the carton.
“That was later, after she went back to work. But when I was really little, she’d let me help her squeeze lemons and stir the sugar into that pitcher. I’ll take it if you don’t want it.”
“I thought you had no room.”
“I’ll make room. Add it to my box.”
Rowan’s box of kitchen keepsakes was already overflowing with everything from a stack of plastic cereal bowls that had been obtained by collecting cereal box tops forty years ago to an entire set of tin cookie cutters.
Noreen carefully wrapped the pitcher in several layers of newspaper as her sister went back to rummaging in the cupboard, saying, “Whoever would have imagined that this day would come?”
“It was inevitable, Ro. Parents pass away. We can’t keep the house.”
“I know, but it breaks my heart to get rid of it. You’d think at least one of us four would have stayed here in town.”
“It’s a dreary place. I’d never raise my family here.”
“Dreary? It’s not dreary.” Rowan waved a hand around the kitchen, with the blue and white gingham curtains Mom had sewn and the old cabinets and paneling she’d talked Dad into painting white years ago, because they couldn’t afford to replace or even refurbish them.
“I don’t mean the house. I mean the town itself. The weather is crappy and everything is so shabby and there are no businesses left downtown and the schools are going downhill and there are no jobs . . .”
“Oh, you and your rose--colored glasses,” Rowan quipped.
“Well, it’s the truth.”
“Times are tough everywhere. A lot of towns are in the same boat. Things will turn around here eventually. Places can change, you know, just like -people.”
“Not always for the better.”
“Sometimes, though.”
“Come on, the only reason Mundy’s Landing is even on the map is because a lot of -people died horrible, bloody, violent deaths here.”
“It’s on the map because it’s a historic place.”
“It’s a tragic place.”