“Mom left us six years ago next Saturday,” he says, as though I didn’t know. As though the date isn’t already tattooed in my mind. “Six years that we’ve had to think about what we did to make her leave. Six years we’ve had to crave the smiley-face pancakes she made once a year…and wonder if we’ll ever taste them again. Dad has his rituals to get through the day. I have mine.”

I frown. Dad holes up in his office around the anniversary of Mom’s abandonment, but my brother’s never adopted a similar habit. Or so I thought.

I stare at the piece of wood, at the way it fits in Archie’s hands, horror dawning. This rod isn’t just a spindle from one of my mom’s furniture pieces. This is the spindle. From the chair.

The breath wheezes in and out of my lungs. “Archie…” I reach out, but there’s no way I can possibly comfort him when I’m about to collapse myself. “This spindle. It’s… It’s…”

I can’t finish the sentence. In all these years, we’ve never talked about it. Not once have we ever discussed or referred to what happened on that terrible day.

“Yes,” he says, lifting his chin. Clutching the piece of wood as though it causes him great pain—but he’ll bear it anyway. “This spindle is part of the chair that Mom threw at us, right before she left forever.”

Chapter 17

Chapter 17

Archie exits the room. I hardly notice. I had no idea he kept this piece of Mom for the last six years. For what? As some kind of sick souvenir? Isn’t the gun cabinet enough?

A tremble moves through my entire body. Mom was so hard that day. As unyielding as the wood with which she worked. As cold as the rivets that held together her furniture. I don’t know what she wanted from us during that last conversation. I’m not sure we could’ve said anything that would’ve made her stay. But when we didn’t give her the answers she was looking for, she flung the chair at us…and took off. For good.

My brother was never the same after that. Me neither. How could we be? The situation was twisted enough to mess us up for life. Luckily—or not—Dad put us both in therapy.

In my sessions, I learned my mother’s actions were not my fault. I learned that I couldn’t have stopped her. She was an adult, and she made her own decisions.