I was just driving home from Mom’s old place—clearing out the last dusty box of her sweaters, trying not to cry into the steering wheel—when I saw the sign. A crooked wooden board leaning against a post near the road, painted in big red letters:
“FARM SALE – TODAY ONLY.”
Something in me hit the brakes before I even realized my foot had moved. Maybe it was the word “farm.” Maybe it was the word “today.” Maybe it was just the ache in my chest that needed a pause, a breath, a distraction. The tires crunched the gravel shoulder as I pulled over. I sat for a moment, engine ticking in the silence, hands still wrapped around the steering wheel like I didn’t know what to do if I let go.
It had been a long day. A long week. A long grief.
Mom had been gone for almost six months, but sorting through her house still felt like sneaking into a life that didn’t quite belong to me anymore. Her sweaters, carefully folded, still carried the soft scent of lavender and dryer sheets. The sight of them in the box beside me—cardigan after cardigan she’d worn to holidays and garden walks—felt like saying goodbye all over again.
I turned off the car and stepped out into the July air, thick with the scent of sun-warmed earth and something faintly floral. The farmhouse was just beyond the hill, its red roof peeking out between tall corn stalks and a wind-worn barn. There were tables set up in the yard, objects arranged with a sort of tender chaos: old tools, glassware, a pile of vinyl records warped from the sun, and a few rows of rusted tin signs.
An elderly man in suspenders waved from a folding chair, his dog napping lazily at his feet. I nodded back, not yet ready to speak. I wandered the tables slowly, touching things without picking them up—just letting my fingers graze memories that weren’t mine.
Then I saw it.
A rocking chair.
continue reading in page 2
