Inheritance

Inheritance

Joyce convulsed entering the attic, sloshing soapy water on her monogrammed apron and the frayed nylon fibers dotting the floor. She knew to lay a towel across the spill. Her mother taught her to keep house -- how to schedule laundry evenly across weekdays, how to recognize the perfect spring day to wash windows, how to discipline a goddamn child who won’t stop crying. She preferred ‘mother’, not ‘mom’ (and certainly not ‘mommy’), but she was gone, and now so was her granddaughter, their common threads just a fingerprinted joist and the gouges in the chair where it hit the floor.