Free Nothing but Trouble by Susan May Warren

Once blue with buds of bachelor buttons in a high border of wallpaper, now the walls were creamy white with green ivy twining the windowsills and down the edge of the closet. “If not, then you should be.”
    “Sometimes I just don’t understand you.” Elizabeth stopped outside PJ’s old bedroom door, hand on the knob. “Now, I don’t want you to be distressed by what you see. I just didn’t know what to do.”
    “What did you do, put a match to the room?” Yet an unfamiliarnostalgia cottoned her chest, and with everything inside her, she longed for pink and eyelet.
    “For crying out loud, PJ.” Elizabeth opened the door.
    PJ stood still, that cotton expanding to fill her throat, cutting off her breathing.
    Preserved. Nearly to the hour she left it so long ago. Her mother had made the bed, pulled up the floral sheets and matching bedspread military tight. The clothes from her graduation party   —a white sleeveless top, a pair of dress pants   —lay folded on her desk chair.
    The calendar read May 29.
    Her clock flashed 12:00 a.m., a power outage fatality.
    The room even smelled like the high school girl she remembered, as if she’d misted her Clinique Happy just moments ago. She advanced slowly onto the pink rug, staring at her softball trophies, her letter jacket slung over the bubble spindle of her bed frame, wallet senior pictures of her friends   —a big one of Trudi   —lined up in a row on her tall dresser.
    Her prom dress hung limp in the open closet. PJ hooked her toes around the white stilettos she’d worn and wiggled one on, rising suddenly on one foot. “Back then, I could nearly look Boo   —”
    Her mother’s eyes sharpened.
    “Nothing.” She shook off the shoe, and it hit the back of the closet. “I can’t believe you haven’t touched this room. After all these years.”
    Elizabeth ran her hand over the floral bedding, as if smoothing out the ripples of time. PJ had a picture, fast and stinging, of her mother standing right there, staring out the window, breathing in the lingering fragrances PJ left behind.
    “I’m sorry that I . . . that it took me so long to come back, Mom.”
    Elizabeth sighed, adjusted the pink pom-pommed pillow on the bed. “I need to remodel this room. So, could you clean your stuff out?”
    With everything inside her, PJ wanted to close the three feet between them, to pull her mother against her. To remind her of the little girl who baked her a cake for her birthday and carried it home from Trudi’s house on her bicycle.
    But that wasn’t the Sugar way.
    PJ ran her fingertips over the gold mock Oscar she’d won in theater class. “All my stuff?”
    Elizabeth smiled as if PJ might be the maid who’d just comprehended her English instructions. “Yes. All of it. Before you leave town again.”
    “Sure, Mom.”
    The phone rang.
    “I can get it.”
    “No, you stay here and get started.” Elizabeth eased by her on her crutches.
    PJ reached out and steadied herself on the bed, her bones suddenly brittle. “Before you leave town again.” Because one never knew when she might have to leave town.
    Clearly her mother was planning on it.
    She walked over to the bookcase and pulled out a Nancy Drew book. The Secret of the Old Clock. She blew the dust from the worn pages. How she’d loved mysteries, fancied herself as Nancy, the supersleuth. She put the book on her desk, her hand dropping to the top drawer, her thumb running over the pewter pull.
    She opened it. And sure enough, her prom pictures lay on top.
    Her finger traced Boone’s smile.
    “Oh no.”
    Her mother’s voice traveled through the halls from her bedroom. Something in it made PJ turn, close the drawer, step out into the hall.
    “That’s just terrible.”
    PJ moved closer to the bedroom door, spying her mother through the crack. She’d sunk down onto the bed   —a burgundy tapestry comforter PJ didn’t recognize   —shaking her head. “Of course. Thanks for calling.” She hung