Pushing the clothing to either side, I don’t find the suitcase, so I go to the next logical place: under the bed. Crouching down on the floor, I lift the quilt, and sitting there, tucked just out of plain view, is the suitcase. I’m surprised she didn’t take it with her. She was always so particular about her photos.

I lay the suitcase on the coffee table in the living room but decide it would be better opened with a glass of wine. On my way to the kitchen to get one, I notice my parents’ old record player and record collection. My mother loved music of all kinds, from Miles Davis to Patsy Cline and the Beatles to Frank Sinatra and Van Morrison.

I’m not sure it will still work, due to lack of use and years of damp, but I choose a Dave Brubeck album anyway, carefully place it on the turntable, and pull the arm back. It clicks into motion, and when I set the needle down, music fills the room. I feel the whole cottage sigh with pleasure. How long has she waited to hear music again?

Sick of the white wine I was drinking earlier, I grab one of the bottles of red from the storage room, throw some more crackers and cheese slices on a plate for my dinner, and head back to the living room.

The sun has set and there’s a slight chill to the room, so before sitting down with the suitcase, I make a fire. Logs are still stacked against the side of the fireplace, kindling in the metal bin on the other side along with some old newspapers. It brings me back to the many times my mother sent me in here after dinner to build a fire on a cool or rainy evening. We’d all sit around it with jazz playing in the background, just like it is now. It was my mother’s glass of wine on the table, though, not mine, and she’d be sitting in a chair reading while my sister and I played cards or a board game.

I was so safe and content back then, in my oblivion. Not knowing that behind the cover of her book, my mother’s mind was most likely drifting to thoughts of West. I naïvely and egotistically thought that May and I were her main concern, that she didn’t really have a life outside our family. As a child, you don’t imagine that your parents are capable of ever making decisions that aren’t in your best interest. As an adult, you realize your parents were human just as you are, and their mistakes along the way suddenly become illuminated by the phosphorescence of your own.