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“I don’t like to talk about him,” Grandma said. “I don’t think I breathed his name once during the fifty years I was married to your grandfather. Only started thinking about him recently. We’ll talk about it later.”

Mom stood in the doorway. “Holly, you can’t let what Jeb did get to you. The cheating says so much more about him than you. And what kind of a man steals a neti pot?”

“One that should have his dick in a guillotine,” Jillian said.

“A what?” Lucy asked.

“A DICK GUILLOTINE,” my sister repeated. “A tiny one.”

Mom laughed before turning back to the kitchen. “Lucy, we’re leaving in thirty minutes.”

Jillian nudged our great-aunt with her elbow. “Leaving in thirty minutes,” she shouted. She did a side bend. “I’m leaving in a bit too. I’m taking the kids to the beach.”

Her kids were guinea pigs.

She put them in a mesh tent and took them on outings.

My sister volunteered at three different animal rescues, where she was known as “the guinea pig girl” because she loved to foster them. For work she sold homemade skin-care products at farmers markets. They were really good, I loved her lavender lip scrub.

Jillian, Mom, and Lucy left. I was glad there was going to be a break in the visitors.

Grandma was lying to me.

She was in pain. She just didn’t want to take anything that would make her sleepy or fog her memory when people were here. She wanted to be present, so she wouldn’t accept anything that would actually take the edge off.

A night nurse came every day at 8:00 p.m. so I could go home to sleep. The night nurses told me that she’d ask for morphine the second I’d left.

The sand was running out of the hourglass. And she didn’t want to waste a single grain of it.

Grandma didn’t feel like a person with only a few grains left. I think that’s why this was so hard.

When Grandpa died, he was tired. His dementia had taken a lot of him. We lost him months before we lost his body too. But Grandma still had so much vitality. She didn’t feel ready to go yet.

I wasn’t ready for her to go either.

John

CHAPTER 4

When I opened the apartment door, the smell hit me. “Hello? Maintenance.”

No answer.

I groaned internally.

I’d been the on-site maintenance man for this building for two months. I’d been happy to get the job. Ecstatic. Brenda and I had broken up four months earlier, and I needed a new place. They gave me a fully remodeled unit, I lived there for free, and the pay was great. Driving in LA is a nightmare, and now I didn’t have to. I worked where I lived, all the stars aligned, and I moved in.

Every day since had been like a horror show.

I’d found a body on my second day.

An elderly man had died in his tub, and the tenants below him called because there was brown water leaking from the ceiling. I thought I was going to fix a broken pipe, and instead I was calling a coroner.

The building had a hundred units, no vacancies. It was fifty years old and showing its age. I could see why they wanted an on-site person, because a lot of the repairs were backlogged. Some people had been waiting for months, so they were already pissed off when I got there.

Traveling across town to help Frank every few days with his new condo was starting to feel like a vacation. At least they were happy to see me.

I was going back today after work to help him install a new sink in the second bathroom. By help, I mean I was going to be doing it by myself, and my brother was going to be taking me out to eat Mexican food when I was done. His dishwasher got delivered, and I’d gone over to install that yesterday. When I’d pulled up, the white Honda was there.