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and closed up the house for the season, waiting for the next go-round of summer encampment. The bed was a large brass affair with ornate detailing etched into the knobs at each of the four corners. It was king-sized and massive and I remembered instantly all the times, as a little girl, I’d climbed into it after being woken by a thunderstorm or a bad dream and my mother would wordlessly encircle me with arms and stroke my hair. I would fall back to sleep instantly and deeply and somehow, the next morning, I would awaken back in my own bed feeling safe and alive.

  Now, in the light of the shattered relationships this house represented it just looked mean, if it’s possible for a bed to look that way. It sagged in the middle for want of a new mattress and box spring and the brass, once so shiny I could clearly see my face in it was now dull and tarnished green in a number of spots. The bed smelled slightly of the lake and of sweat. It no longer offered comfort but seemed to extend only a reproach. I emptied the contents of the window seat and stuffed them into a large plastic bag along with the bed clothes. In another bag, one meant for the charity shop back in Hillbrook, I emptied the contents of the closet. There wasn’t much left in it. Some pants and blouses, outdated and uncomfortable shoes, a couple of summer dresses. All serviceable and perhaps appealing to the young girls in Hillbrook, who bought second-hand clothes in an effort to appear eccentric or clumsily sheik. I gathered the bags together and walked out of the room, shutting the door firmly behind me.

  It was finished. The tasks that my brother and sister insisted that I complete on their behalf in what is their house, are done. I have packed every conceivable memory into bags and placed them carefully into the storage pod that will sit, probably until spring, in the driveway of this house. I have taken the final assessment of this place and found it wanting. They can have it, the peeling paint, the musty odor that has managed to creep into every room over the years, the blankets, pillows, towels and furniture that hold the memory of every summer of our young lives is now ready to be thrown away or sold off. My mother’s letter is the last thing to go into the trash. Letting go of it in the way she let go of me seems fitting, seems right. I no longer have, nor do I want any ties to this past, to this imaginary history that she constructed so that she could more easily get through her life and make sense of it. Nor the real history, the fact of what happened. It’s over now. Finally done.

  It has been too long, Sarah, and too much has happened for there to be any kind of tender moment between us. I am not inclined to simply welcome you back into my life, to be a part of things the way your brother and sister are, have always been really. That’s kind of the key to it, isn’t it Sarah? You’ve never really felt yourself to be a part of this family and your actions make it plain to all of us that you are not interested in being a part of this family. So I’m letting you go Sarah. I’m dismissing you from my life, what’s left of it, and I suspect that this action will bring very little consequence to bear on you. It hurts me more than you can know to have to do this to you. You are my daughter but I cannot find any real love left for you, not after what you’ve done to hurt us. I was a good mother. I tried everything I could think of to make you happy, to make you like us, to make you fit in to our family but you refused all effort at inclusion. This is your own doing. I hope that your life is a happy one without us.

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