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“It all just feels so… so final,” she said, drawing her hand back again as if it had been seared by the letters on the box. “Thirty-one is too young to die.” Her voice was barely above a whisper as she looked back toward me. “For the love of God, she was a year younger than I am, Lacey. Do you know how messed up that feels?”
I nodded.
I did know.
I knewexactlyhow messed up it felt.
“And just two years older than me,” I added, quietly. “When I think about all the things she must have wanted to do, all the plans she had, it just—” My voice broke, and I dashed at my cheeks with my free hand before taking a long sip of my wine. “It just breaks my heart.”
“She’d be pissed if she heard us talking like this,” Harper said, sighing as she walked back over to me and pulled me in for a single-armed hug, careful not to upset either of our wine glasses. “She always used to hate when one of us would bitch about life not being fair, or when one of us would start feeling a little too sorry for ourselves.”
“You’re either busy living…” I said, beginning one of Annie’s favorite sayings.
“Or you’re busy dying,” Harper finished.
I had intended to draw some strength from that expression, to get busy living—or to at least stop thinking about the dying part—but the words sounded empty coming out of my mouth.
The truth was that I missed Annie.
We all did.
Her death had left a hole in our hearts that wouldn’t be filled by catchy motivational sayings, nor by gallons of wine.
“Girls,” Marley’s voice called from the bedroom. “Lacey, Harper—you’ve gotta get in here. You’re gonna want to see this.”
Harper and I exchanged a quick glance as we both started moving toward the bedroom where our other two friends had been busy packing.
I had no idea what we would find when we turned the corner into the bedroom, and Marley’s tone hadn’t given any real hints.
Whatever it might be, though, it had to be better than the pity party we had been starting in the living room.
At the very least, it would be a welcome distraction for a few minutes.
Harper entered the room first, stopping just inside and placing her free hand on her hip while she finished off the last of her wine. “How is it that we’ve left you two alone for a couple of hours and you’ve managed to make the room look evenmorecluttered than when you started?”
I clapped a hand over my own mouth to stop myself from laughing. From what I could see over Harper’s shoulder, she had been absolutely right.
Still, it felt a little…off… to laugh at a time like this, even if it was over something legitimately funny.
And hilariously accurate.
That was how Marley and Kendall were, though. And aside from simultaneous eye-rolls in Harper’s direction, neither of them had tried to deny the accusation.
“Whatever,” Marley said, taking a moment to readjust the perpetually messy bun of fiery red hair piled high on her head before continuing. “We’ve beenbusy.” Then, before her twitching lips spread into a smile that would completely give her away, she elbowed the tall brunette reclining regally on the bed next to her. “Haven’t we, Kendall?”
“We really have been,” Kendall nodded, reaching out to thumb through a stack of papers. “Annie left alotof paperwork. It’s hard to know what to keep and what to get rid of.”
I opened my mouth and then shut it again without saying anything. My knee-jerk reaction had been to tell them to keep it all.
Don’t change anything.
Leave everything, every paper, every receipt, every little sentimental note exactly the way they had found it.
But that wasn’t what we were here to do, was it?
Even if ithadbeen, who would it have helped?
Annie’s parents had both died when she was young, and her grandmother—her only living relative that any of us had been able to track down—was currently living in a nursing home, battling the late stages of Alzheimer’s.
