The last key to Ingrid’s apartment was already useless, but she still refused to hand it back.
It lay in the middle of the kitchen table between a roll of tape and the list Helena had printed in letters large enough to read from the street. Her daughter had divided forty-seven years of possessions into four columns: **keep**, **give away**, **throw away**, **to decide**. Ingrid had added a fifth in pen: **not yours to decide**.
“Very constructive,” Helena said, folding a box.
“I’ve always supported procedural improvements.”
“You worked at town hall for thirty-six years. It isn’t an occupational disease. It can be treated.”
Ingrid took the key and slipped it into her cardigan pocket.
The apartment was almost empty. Without the bookcases, the living room looked narrower, which struck her as petty on the room’s part. Paler rectangles marked the floor where furniture had kept the sun away. The old pendant light was gone; a cable ended in a bare socket holding an overbright white bulb Helena had brought for the move. The light stripped things of their usual indulgence. Marks on the walls were no longer memories: only marks.
On the landing, the elevator door opened with a sigh. A man from the clearance company put his head in.
“Mrs. Lindström? The sideboard too?”
Ingrid looked at the birch sideboard that had belonged to her parents. One door had not closed properly since 1998. Bo had promised to plane the edge, then preferred to die twenty-three years later without keeping that promise, which was a fairly elaborate way to win a domestic argument.
“Not the sideboard,” she said.
Helena looked at the ceiling.
“Mom.”
“It fits in the blue room.”
“It doesn’t fit in the blue room. I measured.”
“You measured the wall. Not the sideboard.”
“I measured the sideboard too.”
“That’s persecution.”
End of excerpt. Discover the other stories in this universe.