She joins me in the kitchen and reaches for the empty mug on the counter.
“Not that one,” I grab it away from her. But instead of putting it back in the cupboard, I give Kiara my usual mug and pour my coffee into Mom’s. I want every piece of her I can get.
Kiara suggests drinking our coffee on the patio, and I follow her outside. It’s still too dark to see clearly. The trees behind our house look like looming ghosts. The houses behind the trees, black holes.
We sit on the plastic Adirondack chairs Mom gottwo winters ago when she first moved here, just after she was diagnosed, just after I moved in with her. She found them at Goodwill and made us eat dinner outside every night for a week to enjoy them, even though it was November.
“I’m sorry, Haze,” Kiara whispers.
I don’t respond. What is there to say?
The sky lightens incrementally. Too slow to notice. One gradient of blue slides into the next. Until sunlight hits the grass and the damp blades shine. Mom always called morning dew fairy glitter.
The air has that special quality I can’t describe, except to say it feels like… morning. Cooler than the rest of the day. Somehow fresher. I try to take a deep breath of it, but my throat snags and tightens.
I rub at the hollowness in my chest and twist my mug in circles. “You really don’t have to stay.”
“Are you kidding? This place is way better than my crap apartment. I might never leave.” She’s right. Her apartment isn’t great. But it’s got to be better than sleeping on the couch.
“You might change your mind when I lose mine.”
“Doubt it.”
“I’m not exactly in a good place right now, Ki.”
“Hadn’t noticed.”
I give her the side-eye. She takes a casual sip of coffee and immediately sputters and sucks air. Mom liked her coffee extra hot. I haven’t changed the settings on the coffeemaker. I haven’t done anything yet.
Kiara sets the mug down on the little tablebetween our chairs and takes a second to recover. She takes my hand and levels me with an uncharacteristically serious look. “I’m not leaving.”
“What if I don’t want you to stay?” I do. I want her to stay. But I don’t want to feel the shame and guilt of intruding on her life. I don’t want to be a burden. If she stays, she’ll look at me differently after this. She’ll know my dark secret. That I’m too much. Fragile.
But I don’t want her to leave. Like Jeremy. Like Kane. Like Cosmos.
“You wouldn’t kick me out when I need you, would you?” she says teasingly. “My lease is up next week, and I have nowhere else to go. So, you’re stuck with me. I’m moving in.”
I know what she’s doing. She’s trying to make it seem like this is forherbenefit, so I won’t feel guilty about it. If I weren’t so scared, I might let her get away with it. But everyone who’s ever lived with me has abandoned me… or died.
“Why?” I ask. “Why would you want to live with me if I don’t want to live with you?”
She throws a hand to her heart and exaggerates her aggrieved expression, but I can see the outline of genuine hurt in her eyes. “If I left, who would listen to me ramble about my mystery novel? And how much Sullivan annoys the hell out of me?” She winks, then the mask drops, and she gives my hand a squeeze. “We’re friends, Hazel. I like you. I’m not gonna leave you in your hour of need.”
We sit in silence long enough for Kiara’s coffee tocool, for her to finish it. Long enough for my coffee to grow cold, un-drunk in Mom’s mug.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
It’s 4:22am again. The time has been branded into my circadian rhythms, and my body can’t let go of it. It’s the first time I’ve been alone in the house since it happened. Last night, Kiara asked if I’d be okay on my own for one night. She had a date, and she expected it to go late. Plus, she needed to get more clothes from her apartment. Normally, I’d ask her about the date, but I didn’t have it in me. I just told her I’d be fine. And she told me she’d be back after work this afternoon.
I didn’t expect to miss her so much. The house feels ghostly quiet.
I take Mom’s urn off my nightstand and carry her ashes to the kitchen. Pour coffee and sit on the couch with one arm still wrapped around the porcelain container that holds Mom’s remains. Such a limited word: remains. So much more of her lingers than this, but not enough of her.
“Remember when I said I wouldn’t stuff you and keep you on the couch?” I’m unsure if I’m talking to the ashes, a memory, a ghost, or just myself. “Apparently, I was lying.”
I picked up Mom’s ashes yesterday afternoon, and already I’m talking to her. Can she hear me? Does it matter? I don’t know what I think about death and the afterlife. I try not to think about it. When I do, I spiral into anxiety.
But sometimes, when watching the sunrise, I can tiptoe up on the thought. In Sunday school, there were such clear-cut, black and white beliefs about what happens after death. Two options. Heaven and Hell. It wasn’t until after Jeremy left and Mom stopped making me go to church that I finally tried reading the Bible for myself and was surprised to discover how messy it all was. It wasn’t like the black and white lessons I was taught as a child. And there actually wasn’t all that much said about the afterlife. So much of what is there is clothed in parables—stories, rather than hard facts. Often the topic is sidestepped altogether.
