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“What’s wrong?”
“You used the thin bread.”
“I what?”
“Ember uses the thick bread. It’s in the breadbox, in the pantry, not the one on the counter.”
Immediately, I remembered what I’d read this morning.
“Sorry, Soph, I will remember next time. Eat up.”
She stared down at her plate and picked at the French toast with her fork, but she didn’t eat it. She said nothing else; she just sat there, pushing food around her plate.
I sat down beside her with my coffee and watched my daughter, who’d been so happy lately, disappear in front of me. There wasn’t a meltdown; it was way worse than that. She went quiet, the same way she’d gone quiet after Rebecca had died. I’d seen this before and I’d been terrified of watching it happen again. In the months following her funeral, Sophie stopped asking me to read her bedtime stories. She withdrew from all the things she loved, and at night she’d put herself in bed, and lay in the dark with the covers pulled up to her chin and silently cry herself to sleep.
There was no way I could watch it happen again.
“Soph, Ember is coming back.”
She looked up at me with those eyes but said nothing. Then she got down off her stool, leaving her plate, and left me alone in the kitchen. I picked up my phone and began a text to Ember, then I deleted it. I started a second one and deleted that one as well. What the hell was I supposed to say? She was right about everything. Her manuscript was a mirror of our life, and the moment Margaret had read a small part of it, she saw it for what it was. But Ember leaving us didn’t fix the book; it broke everything else.
I put my phone down and looked around the kitchen. Everywhere I looked, there were pieces of her. The shopping list she’d written was stuck to the fridge, and the house even smelled like her. Hints of vanilla and cinnamon, and the sweet smell of her body lotion. I knew in time everything would fade because that happened and I knew that better than anyone else. I finished my coffee, put Sophie’s breakfast in the garbage and her plate in the dishwasher, and went to my study.
Chapter Eleven
Ember
When I pulled into the parking lot of our apartment building, I parked the car and looked up at the building. It looked the same as it always had. I sat in the car for a while because there was no way I could walk in looking the way I did. My mother would take one look at me and be able to tell everything, and I really didn’t want her to worry.
Once I’d calmed down, I got out of the car, grabbed my bag and climbed the stairs to the fourth floor.
I unlocked the door and stepped inside. Mom sat in her armchair, wrapped in her favorite sweater, reading a book. She took one look at me and her face filled with concern.
“Ember? What is it? What happened?” She said, putting her book aside and trying to push herself up.
“Don’t get up, Mom. I’m fine.”
“You aren’t fine. You’ve been crying. Come over here.”
I dropped my bag on the floor and made my way over to her. I sank down to the floor beside her and pressed my face against her knee. I couldn’t hold myself up any longer, and the moment I felt her place her hand on the back of my head and stroke my hair the way she used to when I was little, I sobbed.
“I left,” I cried. “I had to leave.”
“The job?”
“Everything, Mom.”
My mom was quiet, but her hand kept moving through my hair.
“Was it the little girl?”
“No, Sophie is…perfect.” My voice broke, tears continuing to fall.
“Her father?”
When I didn’t answer her, I heard her take a deep breath.
“Oh, baby,” she whispered.
