The Saturday Book My Grandfather Kept

Nolia left Willow Bend at eighteen for Springfield and never really came back, not all the way. She sells luxury homes now, drives a car that costs more than most people’s houses out here, and married a man who talks about portfolios the way our grandfather used to talk about torque wrenches. I stayed. I teach at the elementary school two blocks from the store, and I still show up on Saturday mornings, because by the time I was old enough to understand what the store meant to my grandfather, it had started to mean the same thing to me.

My mother has never once hidden which daughter she considers the success story. She keeps a framed photo of Nolia’s beach wedding on the mantel and a framed photo of my college graduation in a drawer, and when people ask about her girls, she talks about Nolia’s listings and Nolia’s house and Nolia’s husband’s promotions, and she calls me, when she remembers to mention me at all, “the one who’s still finding herself,” as if thirty four years old and a mortgage and a classroom full of eight year olds who trust me with their whole days is a phase I might grow out of.