24
Luke doesn’t comeback to work.
My mom says she heard from the neighbor at Mel’s wake that he’s spending the next few weeks at his dad’s.
I haven’t seen him since that day in the bathroom.
On my first day back at work (a week after Mel’s funeral), I arrive early to set up. As soon as Willow sees me, she hurries over and gives me a hug.
The day I found out about Mel’s coma, Willow was the one to drive me home. I think she’s forgiven me already, but I want her to know that everything I didn’t tell her was about me and my shame and my guilt. It wasn’t about not trusting her or not wanting to be her friend.
She nods. “I get it. I’m sorry everything sucks so much right now.”
I swallow to keep from crying. “Can I tell you about them?” I ask. “The Cohens?”
“All of them?” Willow asks.
“All of them,” I say.
She nods.
So I do.
When I enter Ernie’s unit after two weeks away, he heaves a huge sigh of resignation. “I thought you’d finally heard me and left while you were ahead.”
“I told you it’s not happening,” I say, trying my best to be as lively as possible.
“So what happened to you then? Jail time? Food poisoning?”
I laugh. “Food poisoning for two weeks?”
He cuts me with a withering look, as if I don’t even know the things he has seen.
I sit down next to his rocking chair, and he says, “Well, what’s the story? Someone break your heart?”
I shake my head. “Someone died.”
“Sorry,” Ernie says, sounding sincere for possibly the first time since I’ve met him.
“Thanks. It was a long time coming.” I add the disclaimer because I’ve spent the last week trying to numb my pain by telling myself that I knew this was coming. And yet everything still hurts.
“Doesn’t make it any better,” he says. “Hell, I’ve been dying for eighty-seven years and I’m still no good at it.”
I smile. “That’s a good thing, Ernie.”
He harrumphs. “You missed a lot while you were gone,” he says.
“Tell me,” I say.
“The granddaughter sent me this watch thing. Except it doesn’t tell the time. It’s blasting music, showing pictures. It’s terrible.” He pulls it out from his pocket and shows me.
“Ernie, this is really cool. It’s the latest fashion.”
“Why does a wrinkled potato like me need the latest fashion?”
“You can talk to your great-grandkids with it, you can turn on your music without having to get up and go to your speaker. So many cool things. I’m going to show you how to use it, okay?”
Ernie seems skeptical, but he patiently sits through our tutorial. Thirty minutes later he knows how to check and respond to messages and also to check the time, which he claims is the only thing he really needs it for.
