And then dawn had come.
With the guests departed and the shutters down, the eight of them had sat around and talked about the past, and shared food, and cried—
Seven.
Oh, God, there were only seven people in her family now.
And though she’d merely been grieving for half a day—well, if you didn’t count the anticipation of all this that had been going on for weeks—she had learned one thing about this very specific kind of sorrow: Your brain struggled to adjust to the new normal. Even though intellectually, she was very well aware that a big part of her life had just died, she kept having to get used to it, over and over again. Like the seven, not eight. Like the fact that there were going to be no more Sunday night dinners.
And tonight was Sunday.
Or at least… not family dinners as she remembered them.
“Who’s going to make lasagna for Father,” she murmured.
Maybe she could learn how, although why hadn’t she asked hergranmahmento teach her before—
As her phone went off with a text, she glanced over her shoulder at her bedside table.
Dev?
She’d turned off the preview function as soon as her brother had fixated on her dating someone human, so she had to get up and go to her phone. And as she did, she prayed like hell that man wasn’t canceling their meet-up tonight. There was nothing more to be done about hergranmahmenat the moment, and she had no interest in sitting around here with a frozen smile on her face as people continued to express their sincere condolences or look at her with that grave expression of banked sadness. It wasn’t that she didn’t love them all, she just felt suffocated by the emotions—
“Thank God,” she murmured as she checked the time and texted him back.
Dev was complicated for sure. But not as complicated as the rest of her life—
Knock-knock.
Sending the text, she hid her phone in the pocket of her robe. “Come in?”
When Rhamp was the one who entered, she was surprised—and didn’t have the energy to try to hide the reaction. She couldn’t remember the last time he’d been in her room. Then again, this was hardly normal times.
Oh, and you know, he was right about one thing. Therewasa lot of pink in here—
Annnnnd he was shutting them in together. So this was clearly not just a quick check-in, how’s-Dad, update kind of thing.
As Rhamp leaned back against the door and crossed his arms over his chest, she braced herself. “What’s on your mind?”
There was a beat of silence. Then he cleared his throat. “I just wanted to thank you. For what you did last night at the bedside. I couldn’t… I just froze. And if you hadn’t reached out when you did? You’re right. I would have regretted it for the rest of my life.”
Wow, she thought. This was unexpected—
“And it dawned on me,” he continued, “that you were much kinder to me in that moment than I’ve been to you in a long time. Especially recently.”
His eyes roamed around her room with its silk-upholstered furniture and its canopied bed. Dressed in his black leather, he was like a Goth who’d gotten lost on his way to a graveyard and wandered into a dollhouse.
And was she really hearing him right? Was this an apology?
“You’ve been out in the field a lot, that can’t be easy.” She knotted her hair up and put it over her shoulder. “And I know that you’ve been worried aboutGranmahmen.”
“So have you.”
“Well, it’s true. But we’ve always handled things differently.”
There was a long silence. “Can I be honest with you?”
“That depends,” she replied hoarsely. “I’m a little raw right now, so if it’s going to be hard to hear, I’d rather wait.”
