On the back of the note she’s written the calling hours and the funeral time. There’s a viewing this morning. Like I’m supposed to go down to the church and have people stare at me while I look at his dead body so they can spend the next three years talking about how I didn’t react the right way. So they can pretend they know more about me than they really do.

I take the note with me so I'll remember what time the service is. I know enough to know it won’t feel good to see the motorhome, but I can’t stop myself.

— Chapter 64 —

Mrs. Varnick’s place is abandoned now. Margo says they had to put her in a home last year. Her son wanted her to live with them, but after years of Mrs. Varnick calling her daughter-in-law “the fat cow,” she was what Margo called “persona not gratas.”

Weeds grow up fast. There are sumac saplings where Mrs. Varnick used to park her car. Virginia creeper curling into a broken window.

And then, at the end of the road, there’s the motorhome. It’s not a clubhouse. It’s a closet. A tomb. It’s where he left me so he could forget I existed, the way Margo sends her fake Christmas tree to storage after New Year’s.

The white metal sides have rusty stains at every bolt, and one of the windows is broken. I feel like I should go in and search for some kind of understanding. Or maybe to clean everything, because whatever mess is in there shouldn’t be all that’s left of someone. But I can’t make my feet take me to the door. I don’t want to see what he left behind. I don’t want to remember what it felt like to live there. The whole motorhome leans like it might tip over, and I’m not exactly light on my feet.

The thing of it is, the motorhome doesn’t look much worse than it did when I lived in it. It hasn’t changed enough. I feel like if I look hard, I could still find splinters from my guitar in the dirt. I can almost feel the sting of my father’s hand on my cheek.

I walk out to the flooded house foundation. It’s so overgrown that I have to step around roots and bushwhack my way through. Something thorny scratches me and leaves a thin line of blood across the back of my hand. I sit on the edge of the foundation and rest my feet on the first step of what would have been the stairs to our basement. The water comes up to the step below, a film of leaves across the surface. It smells like rot.