Page 73 of Shattered

All I heard was my own voice from three days ago:I’ll come tomorrow.

At the burial, they lowered her casket into the ground.

I watched them cover it with dirt.

I watched the woman who’d been my first love, my first everything, disappear under soil and grass and finality.

I remembered her voice reading me bedtime stories, doing all the character voices even when she was exhausted. Making me laugh even on bad days.

I remembered her face when I’d shown her my first real painting. The pride in her eyes. “You made this? Oh, Delia. You’re going to be extraordinary.”

I remembered her teaching me to ride a bike. Running beside me holding the seat steady. “I’ve got you. I won’t let you fall.”

I remembered her at my high school graduation. Crying happy tears. Telling me she couldn’t wait to see what I’d become.

I remembered her diagnosis. The way her hands had shaken when the doctor said Alzheimer’s. The way she’d looked at me and said,“I might forget your name someday. But I’ll never stop loving you.”

The dirt kept falling. Kept covering her. Kept taking her further away until there was nothing left but a mound of earth where my mother used to be.

Where her laugh used to be. Where her voice used to be. Where the hands that taught me everything used to be.

All of it gone. All of it buried.

After the burial, everyone came back to our house.

Mom’s house. Except it wasn’t anymore. It was just a house now. Just walls and furniture and empty rooms that used to hold her.

People filled those rooms with casseroles and sympathy. Ate food in Mom’s kitchen. Sat in her chairs and touched her things like they had any right.

I stood in the doorway watching strangers occupy her space and felt something inside me crack completely.

This was wrong. All of it was wrong. These people being here. Eating. Living. When she was in the ground.

“I need to leave,” I told Sarah.

“Okay. I’ll drive you.”

“No. I’ll get Axel to—” I stopped, looking around for him. I found him talking to Daniel in the corner.

As if feeling my stare, he turned to me, looking concerned. “Actually, can you just take me home?”

Sarah studied my face. “Are you sure?”

“Please.”

She drove me to Brooklyn in heavy silence. At my building, she asked if I wanted company.

“I need to be alone,” I said.

“Delia, I can stay?—”

“Please, Sarah. I just need to be alone.”

She let me go because she was a good friend. Because she understood that sometimes being alone was the only thing that made sense.

I stood in the doorway staring at my space.

Axel’s mug was on the kitchen table. There were several of his books on my shelves.