April walked in, her hair picture perfect, and scoffed. “Like I’m going to eat those carbs first thing in the morning?”
I held my tongue, which took every bit of effort I had. She passed me at the kitchen island, wearing skinny jeans and a sweater. She had lost weight, too much for her slight frame. Yeah, it was all the rage to be skin and bones, but the girl needed a cheeseburger. “If you eat carbs now, you have all day to burn them off,” I suggested. She stuck her tongue out at me, and I noticed her righteously awesome pair of new equestrian boots. “Christmas?”
She shrugged, snagged the orange juice from the fridge, and poured herself a glass. I grabbed Gus’s Obi-Wan lunch box and packed him up for the day, trying to remember everything Mom did. “Do you have your folder and homework?” He nodded with his mouth full. “Cool. Finish up and wash that face of yours, you sugary mess.” I pretended to eat his cheek and was rewarded with giggles. We needed more giggles.
While he and April finished prepping their day, I tried to think of what Mom did on Mondays. It was her “get stuff done” day, I knew that much. I pulled The Brain from the shelf, checking the calendar. Hockey today for Gus. I would see Josh.
Pushing the butterflies out of my stomach, I flipped to the back where she kept her lists. Here we go. Thank God Mom was predictable in her schedules. Mondays were groceries, errands, week prep, and bills. Bills.
I turned to the stack of mail that had sat unopened these last weeks. It consumed the kitchen work desk and was dangerously close to playing a game of fifty-two-envelope pickup. This was going to suck. Time to dig in.
I sorted it into magazines, catalogs, ads, bills, and the dozens of personal cards that had arrived in droves. Bills would be the most pressing. I could make out all the amounts if Mom could manage to sign them. I cut open the first bill, a credit card, and scanned it. Five thousand dollars! I had no clue Mom and Dad even had credit card debt.
Wait. The charges were all in the last couple weeks. To…White House Black Market? Nordstrom’s? American Eagle? Restaurants, hotel rooms, they were all adding up. All since Dad died.
“Bus time!” Gus called. I kissed his cheeks, and April sauntered in, with—yep—a new Kate Spade messenger bag across her shoulders.
“I’ll take him to the bus,” she offered.
“I found the bill.” I kept my voice low when I heard Grams coming down the stairs.
“Oh?” Her eyebrows raised above her widened doe eyes.
“April, you’ve spent over five thousand dollars. Mom is going to be pissed.”
“Mom’s not going to notice.” She had the nerve to walk away from me.
“It’s not right, April!” Damn. When had I become all moral, chasing after my sister?
Her gaze narrowed into a scowl. “Nothing is right. Dad is dead, Mom’s a vegetable, and I made myself feel better by shopping. So what? We have the money.”
“You stole.”
She snorted. “Whatever.”
“It’s not whatever!” My retort met the door as she slammed it.
“Later, Ember!” Gus hugged my middle and ran out the door, tugging his hat over his ears.
I grabbed the nearest pillow off the entry hall bench and shoved my face into it, screaming. Everything was shit.
“Coffee, dear?” Grams asked, patting the seat next to her.
I nodded my head and took the cup she offered, sinking into the cushions. She would know what to do about this. “Grams, how long are you staying?”
She paused in reflection. “I need to get home. I have a life, too, you know.”
I nearly dropped my cup. She couldn’t leave. The house wouldn’t function. Mom wasn’t ready. I wasn’t ready. “I don’t know what I’m supposed to do anymore, what kind of life I’m supposed to have.”
Her delicate arm came around my shoulders, pulling me to her. “Grief, by its very nature, is designed to suck the life out of us because we are so willing to join our dead. It’s supposed to be this hard to figure out what to do next, but it’s that ‘next’ that makes us the living, and not our dead.” Her soft southern accent drawled on every word.
“Thanks, Grams.” What the hell did that mean?
She laughed. “Oh, my December, you do what you can with your life, what’s in your power. No more, no less.”
Do what I can. Yeah.
Housework consumed my morning. I tackled the dishes, vacuum, grocery list, laundry, and hockey gear. At the dining room table with Grams, I wrote out all the bills while she penned eloquent thank you notes for the countless casseroles that had fed us.
Apparently, grief meant busy work, and every time I moved my wrist while writing, I saw Josh’s number staring back at me. I really wanted to see him, but I also knew I wasn’t ready for what that meant. I was too much of a hot mess to handle myself, let alone any kind of rebound relationship. Was that what he was? My first instinct said no. Josh and Riley were two separate events in my mind, but they were too closely linked.
Around three o’clock in the afternoon, the doorbell rang. I swallowed back the bile in my throat, reminding myself that Dad was already gone; there was nothing to fear from the door anymore. When I opened it to Riley’s mom, I wished I’d gone with my first instinct.
“Ember!” She embraced me with one arm, lasagna pan in the other. “I was hoping June might be up for some company now? She hasn’t let me see her since the funeral.”