Landlord Wars(24)

Several other tall stacks of mail and paper covered an ancient couch I hadn’t sat on in about fifteen years. There were cardboard boxes, an ugly old table lamp with a brown stain on the once-cream shade, and anything and everything you could imagine creating mountains of junk in the living and dining rooms.

Thank God Mom threw out food waste. Some hoarders didn’t.

My mother walked out of the kitchen, holding a ratty towel but looking neat as a pin in an outdated skirt and top she’d been wearing for as long as I could remember.

Her face lit up. “Sophia! What are you doing here? You didn’t tell me you were coming. I would have straightened up.” She looked nervously in the direction of my bedroom.

Other than the tea mugs I sometimes misplaced, I needed things orderly, or it gave me anxiety. I’d made a deal with Mom when I was in high school that my bedroom was off-limits. Other than taking up half my closet with clothes she never wore but refused to get rid of, she’d kept up her part of the bargain. But all bets were off once I moved out. I’d been gone less than three weeks, but it seemed that was enough time for my mom to have taken over my bedroom, given the look she’d just sent me.

“Is it okay if I move back?” The words came out sluggish, as though stuck to the roof of my mouth. This wasn’t what I wanted, but I had no other option at the moment. “The place I found isn’t working out, and I need somewhere to sleep while I search for something new.”

Her eyes widened in either excitement or surprise—it was unclear what went through my mom’s head when it came to her house. And then her forehead smoothed. “Of course, honey. This will always be your home. Though”—she looked behind her again—“your room might need tidying.”

I stepped closer and gave my mom a hug. “I know, Mom. Is there anything I can box up?” I’d stopped asking to get rid of things a long time ago, because it stressed Mom out and made her angry any time Elise and I brought up the notion.

Skimming her eyes over the living room and past an old exercise bike precariously holding clothing that had never been worn—the tags still on them—she seemed to search for something. A second later, she moved off the narrow path of bare rug and climbed on top of a pile of clothes—the only way to enter the living room.

My mom leaned down and lifted a half-full plastic container she’d magically spotted amongst the clutter. “This one still has space,” she said happily, and maneuvered her way back. “Go ahead and put anything you want out of your room inside here.”

Meaning I could place items she’d recently stashed in my old bedroom inside the plastic box, but she wasn’t getting rid of them. She hadn’t been able to get rid of anything since Dad died over fifteen years ago, and she routinely collected more, much to my and Elise’s dismay. “Sure, Mom.”

My mom returned to the kitchen with her dishrag, and I made my way down the narrow, darkened hallway, with books and clothes and plastic knickknacks shoved up against the walls, to my bedroom.

Before I opened the door, I mentally prepared myself. It had been spotless when I left, but that wouldn’t be the case now.

At first, the door wouldn’t budge. I shoved a little harder to get it to open and then stepped inside, but really that meant climbing over the top of a low mountain of clothes.

I was numb. I always felt hopeful that things would be different and then straight numb when they weren’t. The floor was covered not only with clothes but also boxes and papers. An old toaster peeked out of one of the boxes in the corner, and travel toiletries and plastic pill containers spilled out of another. Two dozen cheap vases were stacked against a wall, and a scratched-up wooden hope chest I’d never seen was covered with lamps and other items.

Tears burned my eyes, and I set the plastic container on top of a clothing pile, hitching my workbag higher on my shoulder. My mom picked up things off the street and through social media, but it boggled the mind the sheer volume she could collect in a short time. Was she getting worse?

Every time I saw evidence of my sweet mother’s mental illness, it was like being swamped by an ocean wave, powerful and impossible to fight.

There was no point in trying to pack today. I needed at least twenty boxes to clear everything out, not a half-full plastic container.

Absently, I heard the doorbell ring.

“I’ll get it,” my mom called, her voice carrying over the din of noise echoing inside my head.

Still pondering my dilemma, I thought nothing of someone coming to the house—until I heard the deep, liquid voice of a man.

I stumbled over clothes, knocked into a box, and nearly sprained my neck as I swung my head around the corner of my bedroom doorway to peer down the hall, giving myself a moment of vertigo.

Max Burrows…was inside my mother’s hoarder house?





Chapter Twelve





Sophia





Growing up, I rarely invited friends to my house. On the few occasions I did, before I knew better, those kids either said horrible things about me at school or ghosted me, or both. Either way, I lost whatever connections I had outside the home.

Max Burrows wasn’t like the friends who discovered my secret. He wasn’t a part of the middle class, so even if I’d grown up in a typical middle-income home, that wouldn’t have been normal to him because he mingled among the elite. He hadn’t liked my pink panties dangling off the couch or my mugs—or pretty much anything about me, and that was before he’d seen the worst of it.