The Last Monroe

The letter arrived on a Tuesday. Elara remembers this not because Tuesday's matters, but because she'd been in a client call when her paralegal flagged it as urgent, and "urgent" from a Boston law firm translated to something she couldn't postpone. She'd read it in the bathroom of her office building in Portland, sitting on the restroom lid like a seventeen-year-old hiding from her own life. Victoria Monroe is dead. Elara is the primary beneficiary. Her presence is required. The letter was dated five days prior. Now she's standing in the baggage claim at Logan Airport, watching her suitcase circle past for the second time before she bothers to grab it. The airport smells like every airport: recycled air, everyone's impatience, and the specific exhaustion of people who've been traveling too long. Her carry-on is small enough that it counts as a personality trait at this point. She travels light the way some people pray. It's a habit so ingrained she doesn't question it anymore. The private car service surprises her until it doesn't. She doesn't remember arranging it, which means the lawyer did. The driver holds a sign with her name on it in the efficient way of people who understand lost time is expensive. He's older, maybe sixty, and his familiarity with "Miss Monroe" arrives too quickly to feel accidental. Something shifts in his eyes when she introduces herself. Recognition. Or something close to it. "Your mother was a good woman," he says while loading her luggage. Not is. Was. She's still getting used to the tense change. "Thank you," she tells him, because that's what people say, and she's spent twenty-five years saying the appropriate thing at the appropriate moment. It's the easiest way to move through the world without leaving a dent. The drive into the city hits differently than she expected. Her memory works strangely; the streets don't actually shrink when you grow up, apparently, but the body remembers them smaller. She recognizes the curve near her old house before the GPS acknowledges it. It felt good to be here again, but she has a life now. A job in Portland that pays really well, a stable life, and she was truly not ready for this kind of bomb, being here makes her realize how much smaller her childhood self actually was. She stands outside the house for a moment before entering. October in Boston, the air feels cleaner than she remembers. Trees have started letting go quietly. Her mother loved October, that love is not going to help her now. Sadly. She opened the door, thinking she was about to smell something like dust, childhood and something else, but the house is clean, it's arranged. Groceries in the kitchen, fresh fruit, coffee on the counter, her coffee, the exact brand she buys in Portland, Could her mother have known that, she taught herself, Not unless someone had been paying attention. She moves through the rooms like she's trying not to wake someone. The furniture hasn't changed, the paintings haven't changed. Nothing feels abandoned. That's what makes it strange. The house doesn't feel like somewhere a person has died. It feels like somewhere a person stepped out briefly. Her phone buzzes. Have you landed? Noah. Just checking. Just the kind of thing best friends do when family emergencies happen. She types: Yeah. Just got to the house. His response arrives almost immediately. Please tell me you're not already working. She almost smiles. This is their rhythm. He knows her. Knows that standing inside her dead mother's kitchen, she has probably already checked emails. Maybe twice. I'm fine, she types because explanation requires energy she doesn't have. Will call later. She won't call later. Noah knows this too. They talked for a while after the call, she made herself some warm milk, She finishes her milk, places the cup carefully in the sink, and moves upstairs. Her suitcase waits on the bed. She doesn't unpack. Not yet. She sits instead. She is really not okay, she is starting to feel the weight behind her grief in her ribs. The room hasn't changed, though that's the problem. Everything is exactly where it's supposed to be. Which means she is the thing that moved. She's twenty-five. But this room still remembers the girl who needed her mother. And maybe that girl never left. Her phone vibrates. Unknown Number. Message: We were wondering when you'd come back.