The Aunt Who Moved In

Bertha’s Leaving

There was no shouting after that, no scene the whole county would still be talking about come deer season. My father is not a man built for scenes, and to her credit, in that one moment, neither was Bertha. She looked around the room at the faces that had gone quiet and careful, understood exactly what she was looking at, and asked, with what dignity she had left, if somebody would help her carry her things out to her car.

Quentin carried the first suitcase himself, not out of kindness to her so much as a wish to see the thing through properly, the same way he’d see through gathering a herd or mending a fence line. Nobody said much. Pastor Kessler quietly offered to call the Halvorsens in the morning about the barn. Mrs. Doyle put her arm around me and did not say a word, which was exactly the right thing to do.

Bertha did not come back to Sourwood Gap after that night, as far as I know. Somebody heard, months later, that she had moved back in with a cousin over in Springfield. I do not spend much time wondering about her these days. I spent almost a year of my life doing that kind of wondering already, turning over what I might have done to deserve the things she said to me, and I have decided I would rather spend my remaining wondering on better questions.