He had kept the house in the divorce—a point of bitter contention for my mother—and seeing it again made my stomach turn. The paint was peeling around the window frames, and the front lawn was wildly overgrown. Walking through the front door was a suffocating experience.
The air was stale, smelling faintly of old coffee and dust. I fully expected it to feel like I was sorting through the belongings of a complete stranger. I brought a box of heavy-duty trash bags, determined to clear the place out as quickly and unemotionally as possible.
For the first two days, that’s exactly how it went. I aggressively purged the kitchen cabinets, tossing out expired canned goods and chipped coffee mugs. I bagged up his clothes, donating suits that smelled faintly of mothballs, and threw away stacks of meaningless paperwork. I was a machine, completely numb to the process, moving through the rooms of a man who hadn’t truly known me in over a decade.
By the afternoon of the third day, the main floors were completely empty. The only place left was the attic. I pulled the cord in the upstairs hallway ceiling, and the rickety wooden ladder groaned as it descended. The attic was stiflingly hot, a dark cavern filled with fiberglass insulation and forgotten relics.
I shone my flashlight around the space, expecting to find old holiday decorations or spare furniture. Instead, tucked away in a dark, forgotten corner beneath a pile of heavy winter blankets, was a single, familiar-looking cardboard box. My name was written on the side in thick black marker.
I dragged the box into the center of the attic, sitting cross-legged on the dusty floorboards. I brushed off the thick layer of grime and pulled open the cardboard flaps.
Inside were remnants of my childhood that my mother had packed away when I left for college.
Old stuffed animals, a debate team trophy, a stack of worn-out CDs. But as I dug deeper, I froze when I saw what lay at the very bottom. It was my old high school diary. It was a thick, frayed notebook with a faux-leather cover.
I picked it up, feeling the worn spine under my fingertips. I remembered this diary vividly. It was the one I used to hide carefully between my mattress and box spring. It was my lifeline during the darkest years of my life. It was the exact place where I had poured out every single ounce of my teenage heartbreak, my isolation, and my vicious anger toward him after he abandoned us.
Sitting there in the suffocating heat of the attic, I let out a long breath. I reached out and opened the cover, half-expecting to smile at my own dramatic, angst-filled childhood entries. I expected to read poorly written poetry and furious rants about how much I hated him.
I flipped past the first few pages, skipping the early entries, and opened the book near the middle.
