My eyes open in the dark, and at first, I’m not sure why I’m awake. I pick up my phone from the nightstand, and the clock tells me it’s 1:18 a.m. I start to roll over and go back to sleep, but then I hear the clink of glass, and I notice that there’s weak light shining from under my door.

I get up and pad barefoot into the hall, my feet whispering on the worn-thin carpet, to see that my mother’s bedroom door is open across from mine, and her light is on. She’s sitting on the floor at the end of the bed with her back to me, still fully dressed, surrounded by cardboard boxes. A nearly empty wine bottle and a nearly full stemmed glass stand on her windowsill, in front of vinyl shades that are missing a couple of slats.

Dad always meant to replace them.

If our house is an inventory of my father’s unfinished projects, including his three kids, then my parents’ room is a record of everything he ever did right. Everything he left behind. And right now, it’s all scattered around my mother. A sea of memories.

Her shoulders shake as she sobs softly. I think she may be drowning.

“Mom?” I whisper.

She twists, startled, and wipes her damp cheeks with both hands, leaving a smear of dust beneath her left eye. “Beckett.”

She sits straighter, and I get the distinct impression she wishes she were wearing her badge, because at least then, she’d know how she’s supposed to act.

The police department has guidelines for what to do in any situation. But to my knowledge, there’s no such manual for parenting.

She sniffles. “Did I wake you?”

“Nah. I had to pee,” I lie as I pick my way across the room, stepping over the remnants of my father’s life. Piles of clothes. Books. Shoeboxes full of photographs. His acoustic guitar is propped against the wall next to the window, the fretboard worn free of the finish from years of contact with his fingers.

When I was little, he used to play me a song before bed every night. One he’d made up just for me.

“You can’t throw out his guitar.” I push aside a shoebox of army challenge coins—one from every platoon he was ever in—and pull the guitar into my lap as I sit.

“I’m not throwing anything out, Beck. But I have to do something with all of this.” She shrugs, then she reaches for her glass. “Donate it. Store it. I’m open to ideas.”

I strum my fingers across the strings of the guitar, wincing when the twang sounds out of tune. I have no idea how to fix that. Or how to play. I always meant to learn.

Dad always meant to teach me.