36
fiction
INHERITED SPIRIT words Sarah Phillips-Burger image OlPhotoV/Shutterstock
R
Ruth was always running late. The ongoing joke in
began to gather on her neck. A blue metal dumpster sat
her family was that you could always depend on three
in the driveway that lead to the front door and as she
things: death, taxes, and Ruth being the last one to arrive
passed it, the day’s heat radiated out, warning her away
anywhere. And now, as she looked down at the clock on
and toward the side door. Nana, it seemed, was a bit of
the dashboard, she saw she was an hour-and-a-half late to
a hoarder.
meet her mother. She had promised she would help clean out her grandmother’s house that had sat empty since
Ruth tugged the storm door open, and it creaked its
Nana went into the nursing home. She pressed on the
welcome as she stepped inside the disheveled kitchen. It
clutch and pushed the gear shift into fourth as she sped
still smelled like her Nana’s; the scent of warm cornbread,
along the highway, her car revving in earnest to make up
sugar, and coffee soaked into every pore of the room. The
some lost time.
boxes that filled the floor were marked with a Sharpie, noting their temporary inhabitants. All the cabinet doors
She pulled into the driveway and parked between two
were open, the shelves behind them barren. Ruth tossed
pine trees in her grandmother’s yard, her tires crushing
her keys on the white countertop next to a pair of yellow
pinecones and coming to rest on the accumulated needles.
latex gloves and followed the narrow trail left open
Ruth opened the car door and felt the rush of the July heat
through the boxes.
almost push her back into her seat. Like a cold Coke taken out of a refrigerator in a hot kitchen, sweat immediately
“Mom?” she called out.
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