“The hospital chapel. You have some praying to do. You need to tell God that you're sorry.” She didn't let go of my arm. When we got to the ground floor, she pinched harder to corral me off the elevator.
“Sorry for what?” It was a legitimate question. I'd just been through something no kid should ever have to go through and there she was, telling me to apologize?
“For telling your father. You caused him to misjudge her. God is the only judge, Katherine. And children have no place telling a grown-up's secrets.”
That last part was what really put me over the edge. I stopped in my tracks and wrung myself out of her grip like a wild animal. “She should've kept it a secret. She shouldn't have dragged me and Amy into it.”
I'd braced for a violent rebuttal. Grandma Price had yelled at me many times before that day. She was the Shakespeare of stern talking-tos. But instead, she started to cry. She leaned back against the hideous mint green wall right there in the middle of the hospital and slid all the way to the floor, crumpling in a heap. Visitors walked by and stared at us. A nurse stopped and asked if we needed help, but Grandma shooed her away.
I have no idea why, but I ran to her. I wanted to comfort her. She was so obviously hurting, and I wanted someone to share my own pain with. “Grandma. It's okay. We're all sad.” With every inch of my adult self I could still remember what it was like to sit on that linoleum floor and wait for a hug from my grandmother. Maybe a few kind words.I'm so sorry, sweetie. You're right. Come here.
“I lost my daughter and I feel like I lost my granddaughter, too.”
“Amy's going to be fine, Grandma. She just has a broken wrist and a concussion.”
That was when the anger returned. The color in her eyes was like something out of a movie about demons or monsters. It wasn't human. It wasn't normal at all. “Not Amy. You. I lost you yesterday, Katherine. I can't look at you ever again. All I'll ever see is my dead daughter.”
I couldn't remember what happened after that. I must've either blacked out or blocked it from my memory. The only thing I could recall was what happened when Dad and I went home that night, my suitcase and Amy’s were waiting on the front porch. Apparently the police had brought them back to the house.
“What are these?” Dad asked.
It broke my heart to have to tell him. “Mom packed our suitcases before she made us get in the car to go to his house.”
He cleared his throat. “So she really was taking you to live with him.”
“That’s what she said.”
I had no idea what had happened to Mom’s suitcase until we walked into our eerily quiet house and very quickly learned that every last thing that belonged to her was gone—her clothes, her shoes, her jewelry. And apparently her suitcase. Grandma took every picture, leaving behind only one—our parents' wedding portrait. As definitively as our mother was gone from our lives, so were the physical reminders. She was less than a ghost. It was almost like she'd never existed. Amy and I were the most substantial evidence of her time on earth, and we were both battered by it.
A few days later and in tears, Dad put the wedding portrait in the front closet. We never got anything of Mom's back from Grandma. Not a damn thing. She denied she'd taken everything, but it had to have been her. She'd had a key to the house and all the motive in the world. Amy and I had tried several times over the years, but we only met up with a big brick wall.
“No. Probably not the best idea to invite Grandma Price,” I said to Amy, pushing my scrambled eggs around on my plate. “It would just upset Dad and I don't think she's doing well anyway. Aunt Lucy posted about it on Facebook.”
“Good God, Katherine. You're friends with Aunt Lucy? I've blocked that whole side of the family. No good comes from digging up the past with them anyway.”
“We don't dig up the past. I post funny cat videos and she shares tasteless memes and I mute her most of the time.”
“Whatever. My point is that you don't need to throw me a bridal shower. Luke and I don't want a lot of hoopla. Really.”
My stomach growled, but I pushed aside my breakfast. I had to find some great way to play a role in the wedding. I had to do right by my sister. “What about the whole something old, something new tradition? I was thinking about that last night. I could be in charge of that.”
Amy shrugged. “I wouldn't be off to a very good start, would I? It's hard when you don't have anything old.”
“You have me.” I smiled.
“You're not old. You're just grumpy.”
“Grandma Price has all of Mom's stuff. Including all of her jewelry. There was that pearl necklace Mom used to wear whenever we went somewhere nice. The double strand she wore on her wedding day. The one from their wedding portrait.”
Amy and I had spent hours upon hours staring at that picture, studying it. It was, after all, the only remaining photographic evidence that our mother had ever existed, outside of the clipping of her obituary that Dad had kept in the desk in his study. Grandma had taken everything else, even the pictures of our summer vacations and Christmas mornings.
Often, when Dad was out of the house, either mowing the lawn or perhaps running an errand, which was usually a trip to the liquor store, Amy and I would clamor to pull the wedding portrait from the depths of the coat closet. We would sit on the hardwood floor, poring over this glimpse of a happy past. We analyzed our mother's facial expression, looking for clues as to why she might later become so very unhappy. We admired the way her golden blond hair curled at her temples and the way her long veil cascaded down her back. We even dared to pose theories about what our lives might be like if things had been different. If she had lived. I never really cared for that part of the conversation because it sent the guilt crushing down, but Amy liked to talk about it, so I would put up with it until we'd hear Dad's key in the front door and we'd scramble to return the photo to where it belonged—leaning against the wall behind the coats, facing away.
“Do you think she still has it? The necklace?” Amy asked.
“I don't know. But we could ask. I could send Aunt Lucy a message and see if she can get it for us.” I had no idea what misguided part of me wanted so desperately for Amy to have something of our mother's for her wedding, but I did. That had always been such a hard part of trying to heal after Mom's death. Neither of us had a single thing to hold onto, which made it really hard to remember the good times. Despite the way things ended up, there had been good times. There had been happy days.
“You're opening a whole can of worms that I don't know if I'm eager to open. How do you even broach the subject without Aunt Lucy asking whether or not she'll be invited?”
