The Cherished

DedicationFor Zack ContentsCoverTitle PageDedicationOneTwoThreeFourFiveSixSevenEightNineTenElevenTwelveThirteenFourteenFifteenSixteenSeventeenEighteenNineteenTwentyTwenty-OneTwenty-TwoTwenty-ThreeTwenty-FourAbout the AuthorBooks by Patricia WardBack AdCopyrightAbout the Publisher maur is gone. they put her in the ground yesterday. i wore the suit she got me when she found out she was dying. alls you do is stand there she told me. you dont have to speak. times like that no one asks for talk.it was just like she said. hattie sat by me in the front. we were the family.sam from morrow farm come and penny brought candles wrapped in paper and sarah come with flowers and hugged me too much. edie and all everyone else from town were there. the pastor said us all being together would help the healing.it did not.i keep thinking how she got at the end. it must have been the dying which means it could happen to me. she worried about everything. the garden the house the door. she got worked up id go. she said dont you take off out there in the world. you stay put right here. youll make do she said. that’s what people do.im not people i said.its growing season. ive got greens cabbage asparagus broccoli rhubarb and peas coming up. ive got half a crate left of her soaps wrapped in felted covers and tied with string. after she got sick she quit making stuff. she said her hands felt weak as wet wool.its no matter now.shes gone. OneThe fateful letter’s lain on the entryway table for days, getting buried under junk mail until the morning of Nana’s birthday bash, when Jo is exhorted to deal with the pile because her mom, Abigail, can’t possibly think in this chaos, and why can’t they be more tidy, and what has she done to deserve any of this?She gets strung out every time they have to attend a thing at Nana’s, especially if it’s a holiday thing, or a birthday thing with such weight as Nana turning seventy-five and inviting half the planet to pay homage.“It’s not my mail,” Jo grumbles. She’s sixteen: nobody sends her mail. So it’s not her pile or her job.“Get that look off your face!” Abigail snaps.She’s a balloon, seven months pregnant, easily flustered, and ready to pounce on the slightest thing. Jo scowls and loads the mail up in her arms. “It’s not my fault it gets like this. It’s consumerism. Look, it’s all ads and catalogs. It’s disgusting.”“Oh, for heaven’s sake.” Abigail rolls her eyes at the ceiling. “Get on with it. Today’s going to be awful.”Only because you make it that way, Jo fumes inwardly. She dumps the mail on the breakfast table, shoving aside the dirty plates left by her stepdad, Robert. Abigail says he can’t help never cleaning up, it’s how he was raised; plus, he’s a man. So he gets to leave a trail of dirty plates and cutlery and half-finished drinks around the house, and they—or rather Jo, now that Abigail’s increasingly ornery and tired—have to pick up after him the days the housekeeper doesn’t come. Robert shouldn’t be let off the hook. It’s so patriarchal, not to mention lame.She’s been stacking junk mail on the right and bills and such on the left, and then she comes upon the letter, which is addressed, weirdly enough, to her: Josephine Margaret Lavoie.It’s so startling that she just stands there drinking in the strangeness. It’s from a Nathanael Fletcher, Esquire., in St. Johnsbury, VT.Vermont.A tendril of unease snakes up through her belly into her throat. She tears at the envelope, unfolds the single sheet, and scans the contents.“Mom?” she calls. “Mom!”“What?” her mother screams from some other part of the house. “Why do you always yell? Why can’t you just find me?”“Where are you?” Jo hollers, now in the hallway.“UpSTAIRS!” Abigail screeches.Jo takes the stairs two at a time. Her mom is in front of her wardrobe mirrors, wearing the dress she spent hours choosing at Nordstrom while Jo died of boredom.“I look like a whale,” she says in despair.“Gammy Maureen’s dead,” Jo says, holding up the letter. “She left me the house.”Abigail’s mouth opens in shock. Their eyes hold in the mirror. Slowly, Abigail turns around. “She what?”Robert takes over deciphering the legalese when he comes back from tennis. He stands in the front hall, pink cheeked and dripping, frowning down at the letter. Abigail peers over his elbow while Jo frets, watching, waiting. A whole house, left to her. She owns an actual house. Even if it’s that one.She feels a twinge of guilt that she’s more focused on the house than Gammy Maureen being dead. But in her defense, Jo barely knew her. The last time anyone even heard from Gammy was two years ago, at the funeral. She showed up in an ancient Cadillac, having driven on her own all the way from Vermont. The gathering for Jo’s dad, Enzo, was pitifully small, and when she limped in everyone stared. She stood out with her long gray braids and wrinkled linen outfit and leather sandals. She spoke to no one, just sat there with her hands clasped in a fist. At the end of it, on the steps outside, she stopped in front of Abigail and said: You ruined his life.Abigail was too shocked to reply, and Gammy Maureen tromped down the steps to her boat of a car, threw her cane in the back seat, and roared off. In the moments after, Abigail feigned indifference, calling Gammy crazy as a sack of cats and an irrational old hag. But later that night, she blew up, storming around kitchen: So now I’m responsible for everything? she ranted. He chose me, and she never got over it! Crazy old cow! She’s the one that drove him crazy, not me! Then she screamed at Robert and smashed a dish when he remarked that she was having more cigarettes than her usual two per day.For her part, Jo couldn’t believe someone so old—she had to be about eighty—drove all the way from Vermont and back