Leaving Yesterday by Kathryn Cushman Page A

The hair at the back of her head stood out in all directions as if perhaps she’d been lying in bed.
    “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t just drop by like this. Were you sleeping?”
    “Of course you should just drop by. You know I’m always happy to see you. And no, I wasn’t asleep. I was lying in my bed watching some of that daytime trash television. You know, the kind that actually kills brain cells every time you watch it.” She coughed a quick laugh. “What’s left of my mind thanks you. Now, come in, sit.” She turned and walked toward her kitchen, never even looking back to see if I followed. Our friendship was such that she just trusted that I would. “You want something cold to drink? Or some coffee?”
    “No thanks. I can’t stay long. I just have to ask you about something.”
    She dropped into a chair at her kitchen table, as if the effort to walk to the front door and back had been overwhelming. “Ask away.”
    “Well, the good news is, Kurt came for dinner last night and it was wonderful. He looked so much better than he has in a long time. He was happy. He’s really determined to make it work.”
    “Sounds good so far.”
    “Yeah, that part’s great. It’s the rest of it that gets a little fuzzy.”
    She smoothed her hand across the white linen tablecloth. “Let’s hear it.”
    “Kurt’s former landlord brought by some of his things a while back. I’ve been storing them for him. Last night, after he left, I realized he would need the things in those boxes. I decided it would be a good time to go through everything, wash all his clothes, iron and fold them, you know, the mother instinct kicking in.”
    Lacey leaned back and draped her arm across the empty chair beside her. “Let me guess, you found something you wish you hadn’t, and now you’re wondering what to do with it.” Her eyes locked on me, but otherwise her expression showed no sign of alarm whatsoever. Beneath her fragile shell of a body lived the mind of an incredibly sharp woman.
    “How do you do that?”
    “It’s not that hard to figure out. The boy was an addict who all but lived on the streets for the last couple of years. There’s bound to be some skeletons in his closet, and it only makes sense that some of the skeletons would be evident in his personal effects.”
    I could tell by the flip tone of her voice that she had not followed the path all the way to its true conclusion. She must have assumed I’d found drugs or paraphernalia, and I wasn’t ready to correct that assumption yet. “What do you think I should do with what I’ve found?”
    “Get rid of it.” She waved a dismissive hand as if the subject wasn’t even worth further discussion.
    “But isn’t that illegal?”
    “Listen, there’s legal, and there’s what’s right.” She leaned forward on her elbows. “In this case, your son has pulled his life, which was basically a train wreck, back up on the tracks and started it moving in the right direction again. Whatever you found is from his past. That was yesterday, now he’s living in today. The thing to do in a case like this is to clear the debris and let him move, leave all the goop from yesterday behind. Get rid of it.”
    “It just feels so … wrong.”
    “Hey, you’re the one with the Christian sensibilities, not me. But doesn’t the Bible say something about moving our wrongdoings way beyond the east, or something like that?”
    “Huh?” I looked at her for a moment, wracking my brain for what she might be talking about. Then it occurred to me. “Well, there is a verse about Him removing our sins as far as the east is from the west.”
    She pointed at me and nodded. “Bingo. That’s the one I’m talking about. Seems to me if God forgives, forgets, and moves on, you ought to be able to do the same thing without much call for conscience. The way I see it, the old Kurt doesn’t even exist anymore. Why should his baggage?”
    There were a few flaws in her argument, I knew that