Page 78 of Every Almost

She set the pin down, stood up, walked to the kitchen, and started making a list. Flights to book, clothes to pack, things she would need to help Helen with the plans.

She looked at the list, crossed out "flights," and wrote "drive."

It was the only way she knew how to carry something she couldn't repair. The freedom of the car, and music.

? SHELBYVILLE, INDIANA, UNITED STATES ?

Charlie left Pasadena before sunrise on Monday. She drove the Plymouth east on I-40, then north through the heartland, the road unspooling in front of her for four days. She stopped at motels when she couldn't see straight and ate at diners where nobody knew her name. She alternated between Katie's mixtapes and her own worn copy ofRumours, the cassette that had lived in the Plymouth's stereo for years. Somewhere in the middle of Oklahoma, "Songbird" came on and Charlie pulled over to the shoulder. She sat there with the engine running and her hands on the wheel until the song was over, grieving the only way she could process.

Through music.

She arrived in Shelbyville on Thursday afternoon. Katie met her at Helen's front door and held on to her for a long time without saying anything. They didn't need words just as they'd never needed words for the things that truly mattered.

The funeral was scheduled for Saturday. Helen had told them Frank was insistent that his funeral be full of color, not black. He'd said it years ago, in that offhand way of his, as though planning for your own funeral was just another whimsical project. "When I go," he'd said, "I don't want a room full of dark,cold, listless grays. I want color! I want people to look like they just came from the party of the year."

On the morning of the funeral, Charlie and Katie sat at Helen's yellow kitchen table waiting to take her to the church together. Charlie wore dark slacks and a pressed white shirt. Katie wore a dress in a deep cornflower blue that caught the color of her eyes, the same shade of blue-green that shifted in the light the way lake water does on a clear day. It was the first time the chapter of Charlie's life had paused long enough for her to see her sister as a young woman, not just her little sister. Katie was beautiful, and Charlie realized with a small ache that she had no idea when that had happened.

Helen came around the corner from the hallway, moving slowly, snapping her handbag shut. She was dressed in a yellow polka-dot dress with a matching yellow hat and a lace covering over her eyes.

She looked like sunshine, Charlie thought.

When she saw them in their seats at the table, she smiled gently. "There are my girls."

Both Katie and Charlie got up and went to her, hugging her gently. She wrapped her arms around them both and kissed each one on the cheek before pulling away and smoothing her dress.

"Shall we head to the church?" The girls nodded and started for the kitchen door.

"Charlie Wickett."

Charlie stopped and turned on her heel. When Helen used her full name, you paid attention.

"You'll freeze without a jacket!"

Charlie looked down at her outfit. She shrugged. "I didn't pack anything that goes with this."

Helen huffed, walked over, and grabbed Charlie's hand. "Follow me."

She led Charlie through the house and into the bedroom she'd shared with Frank, a room Charlie had only been in a handful of times. The room smelled like pipe tobacco and Helen's hand cream, and the bed was made with military precision, the way Frank had always made it.

Helen opened the closet doors and scanned Frank's clothes, still there on the hangers. Charlie watched as Helen's fingers ran against the fabric of each piece, touching them slowly, taking her own moment with a piece of Frank. Finally, she settled on something near the end of the line.

"Here we go," Helen said, pulling the garment free.

It was a sport coat in a deep, rich aquamarine, the same color of the shallow Pacific Ocean on the shores of the places Frank had told stories about. Hawaii, Samoa, the islands where the Enterprise had anchored between battles.

Charlie's throat tightened. She could smell him in the fabric. That same pipe tobacco and the faint mineral trace of motor oil that never quite washed out of anything Frank owned. The conversation she'd never get to have pressed against her chest again, the way it had been pressing since Saturday night.

"Stand up, honey," Helen said.

Charlie stood. Helen helped her fit the coat on, smoothing out the material on her back, then walking around to adjust the collar and press the lapels flat. Helen didn't look up at Charlie while she worked. But Charlie noticed the gleam in her eyes as she kept smoothing the fabric.

Helen stepped back and looked over Charlie from head to toe, then raised her gaze to look her in the eye.

"You look absolutely stunning, sweetheart."

Charlie's eyebrows pulled together, fighting back the burning behind her eyes. She turned around and looked in the mirror on the dresser. The coat fit her like it had been waiting for her. The color was extraordinary against her white shirt and tanned,freckled skin, and the wool was heavy and warm and lined with Bemberg silk that felt like being held.

"It suits you," Helen said, watching her in the mirror.