The spa trip in the Blue Ridge mountains was beautiful with its mineral pools and quiet mornings spent talking about my parents until the memories started to warm us.
I did not know that while I was soaking in hot springs, my husband was busy arranging to erase the last house where I had ever been fully loved.
I returned on a gray afternoon and noticed immediately that the sky looked wrong because there was far too much empty space over the neighborhood.
I slowed the car as my eyes rejected the sight of the snapped dogwood tree and the pile of rubble where the front steps used to be.
The house was completely gone and the lot was a wound of churned mud and broken lumber that contained the shattered pieces of my entire life.
Russell stepped out from beside a pickup truck with his parents, and all three of them were smiling with pride at what they had done.
“Well, you are finally free of that burden and we can move forward with the inheritance properly,” Russell shouted with a wide grin.
Don added that there was no point in hanging onto old junk while Brenda looked at me with a bright and expectant greed.