Heart Like Mine (28 page)

“You’re such a slob,” Sam said. “I don’t know why I put up with you.”

Wade leaned over to give him a quick peck on the cheek. “Because you can’t help yourself.”

“Grace,” Ava said in a tightly strung voice. “Where’s the bathroom?”

“Down the hall,” Sam answered for me, nodding toward the entryway that led out of the kitchen. “Second door on the left.”

“Thanks,” she said, and quickly turned around, walking in a stiff, strange motion. I felt a twinge of concern in my own stomach,
wondering if she had some kind of a virus or if it was just the stress of facing the first major holiday without her mother. With Victor’s having to be at the restaurant, she could have been feeling even more abandoned.

“Poor thing,” Melody said, reaching for a carrot from the veggie tray Sam had set out in front of them. “I hope she’s okay.”

“Me too,” I said, leaning against the wall behind me and taking a sip from my glass.

Sam gave Max a little nudge with his elbow. “So, tell me, Max,” he said as he cut potatoes into inch-wide cubes. “Is there anything you’re especially grateful for this year?”

I held my breath, wondering if this was a loaded question for my brother to ask. Kelli had died just over a month ago—I wasn’t sure if there was anything Max
would
be grateful for right now. I suddenly worried he’d lose it, like he had the night he wet the bed.

But Max, who had been scooping up pieces of cubed potato and dropping them into a silver pan filled with water, simply paused a moment before answering. “Well,” he said in a matter-of-fact tone, “I’m pretty grateful that Grace isn’t cooking this dinner.”

“Ha!” Sam said, patting Max on the back. “Me too!”

“Me too!” my mom and Melody chimed in unison.

“Hey now!” I protested, though I was laughing. “Be
nice
!”

We all chatted for a few minutes, making small talk about how business was going at the Loft and how many new clients Melody had during the holiday season. I kept glancing in the direction Ava had gone, waiting for her to return, but she didn’t. “I’m going to check on her,” I said, placing my glass on the speckled granite countertop. I made my way down the dark hallway, stopping in front of the bathroom door. A thin sliver of light
glowed beneath it and I heard the quiet but still audible sound of Ava’s crying.

“Sweetie?” I said, knocking softly. “What’s wrong? Did you get sick?”

“No,” Ava said. Her words were muffled by the door and her tears. “Please go away.”

“I can’t,” I said quietly, placing my palm flat against the door. “I’m worried about you.” I paused. “Is it just being here without your dad? I’m sure you’re missing your mom so much today, too. It’s totally normal to be sad—”

“It’s not
that
!” she cried out as she flung open the door, leaving me standing with my palm in the empty air. Her eyes were swollen and she was still very pale. I dropped my hand and reached out to smooth her hair from her face.

“Then what is it?” I asked, attempting to keep my tone low and calm.

She dropped her chin down, shaking her head back and forth. “I don’t want to tell you.”

As I considered her symptoms, a realization clicked in my mind. Headache, stomachache, pale skin, and now hiding in the bathroom. “Did you get your period?” I asked in a soft voice, so no one else would hear. She was the right age for it, and as far as I knew, she hadn’t gotten it yet. If she had, I was pretty sure I would have seen the evidence in the bathroom over the last year.

Max chose this moment to pop his head around the corner from the kitchen. “Did she
barf
?” he called out, and I had to repress a giggle.

“No!” Ava snapped, and reached to close the door in my face, but I stopped her by stepping through the threshold.

“We’ll be out in a few minutes, Max,” I said. “Can you ask Melody to come talk with me, please?”

“Okay!” he said, and disappeared.

I looked back at Ava, who had dropped down to sit on the edge of the bathtub, her face in her hands. Her shoulders shook as she cried. “I miss my mom,” she said.

The muscles in my throat tensed hearing the pain in her voice. I closed the door behind me and put the toilet lid down so I could sit, too. “I know you do, honey. I’m so sorry. This is all so hard.” I paused. “What do you miss most about her?”

She looked at me hesitantly. “I don’t know how to say it. I just miss her. She’s supposed to be here for me. To help me. And she just
left
.”

“What was your favorite thing to do with her? Cook?”

Ava shook her head. “Dance, I guess. She liked to dance.”

“Ah. So that’s why you’re so good at it.” Her wanting to join the team suddenly made more sense.

“I miss her so much. I want her to come
back
.” Her shoulders began to shake and I reached over and put my hand on the top of her thigh, rubbing lightly. I wanted to hug her, but it felt like there was an invisible shield between us. I didn’t want to push my luck and have an already fragile link shatter.

I was quiet for a few minutes, just letting her cry. Letting her miss her mother without my trying to make her feel better, which I knew was a pointless endeavor. Like the women I worked with, who came to us with not just broken bones but grief-ridden souls, Ava needed to let the pain out. All I could do was bear witness to her sorrow so she wouldn’t have to work through it on her own.

When she finally quieted, I spoke again, knowing we needed to deal with the more practical issue at hand. “Are you bleeding a lot or just a little?”

“Just a little.” Her voice was small. “I just put some toilet paper—”

“Good,” I said, gently cutting her off. I remember being
horrified
having to discuss anything related to my body with my mother, so I wanted to save her from having to explain the details. “I don’t have any supplies with me, so hopefully Melody will. I’m pretty sure Sam and Wade don’t keep any around. But we can always make a run to the store, okay? Everything will be fine.”

She gave a short groan. “This is so
embarrassing
.”

“I know,” I said, reaching out to rub her back. She wore her mother’s red sweater with a black skirt, as she had the day of Kelli’s memorial. “I think every girl gets embarrassed when it happens. I remember when I got
my
first period. I was twelve, wearing white jeans,
and
I was at school.”

She looked at me with wide eyes. “Really?” Her hand flew to cover her mouth, then dropped it again. “What did you
do
?”

“I ran to the bathroom and my teacher sent the school nurse in to help me.”

“That’s
awful.
I would have
died
.”

I chuckled. “I felt that way at the time, too, but I got over it. Eventually.” She gave me a small smile and I felt such an overwhelming wave of fondness for her in that moment, I almost began crying myself. But then there was a soft knock on the door, and Melody opened it.

“So
this
is where the party is!” she said. “Why didn’t I get an invite?”

“Do you have any tampons?” I asked her in a low voice, and understanding quickly blossomed across her face. She nodded.

She took a step toward Ava and leaned down to hug her. “Welcome to the club, darlin’.” She returned less than a minute later with her purse in hand, then pulled out a small blue box and placed it on the counter next to the sink. I stood up, too.

“I’ll be right outside, if you need help,” I said. Melody moved into the hallway and I started to follow her, but then Ava spoke again.

“Grace?”

I stopped and turned to look at her. “Do you want me to stay?”

She pressed her lips together and shook her dark head. “No. I’ll be fine. But . . . thank you.”

“You’re welcome, honey,” I said, giving her a warm smile before rejoining the rest of my family, suddenly feeling like I had a whole new reason to give thanks.

When we got home from Thanksgiving dinner, I went straight to my room. I couldn’t believe I got my period and Mama wasn’t there to help me—it made me feel like I’d lost her all over again.

But Grace was there. She was actually really
nice
to me, which just made me feel more confused. When she talked with me in the bathroom that night, I felt protected and safe. Understood. Grace calmed me down, she made me laugh, and thinking about her now, I could feel Mama’s disapproval hanging in the air around me, thick enough to make it hard to breathe.

After I’d shut the door and flipped on the light in my bedroom, I walked directly over to the boxes of Mama’s things. If she couldn’t be here today, maybe at least I could feel close to her by touching the books she’d held in her hands, smelling the clothes that she sprayed with her perfume. With a deep intake of breath, I yanked the cardboard top open and looked inside. Books were stacked together tightly; I picked one of them up, flipping through the pages before setting it aside and picking up another. I didn’t know what I thought I’d find. It would have been easy if she kept a journal, spilling out all of her secrets onto the page, but I was pretty sure if she had, Dad wouldn’t have given it to me. I should have looked for one the day Bree and I were at her house. And soon, he’d hire movers to pack up the rest of the house. Everything
would be gone—every trace of my mother erased. I opened the second box, pulled out a wad of Mama’s clothes, and pressed them to my face. I breathed the scent of her in and a few tears squeezed out of the corners of my eyes.

I reached back into the box to see what else my dad had packed. I pulled out another book, this one called
Healing After Loss
. I vaguely remembered her reading this as she lay in bed, underlining passages and making notes in the margins. I fanned through the pages slowly, looking at the sentences she’d marked up:
You can let go of the pain
, one of them read.
You can choose to stop hurting, to release it like a tree releases a leaf from a branch.
Reading this, I snorted, rolled my eyes, and picked up my cell phone to call Bree.

“Guess what?” I said. “I got my period.” We’d both been wondering which one of us it would happen to first and each promised to let the other know the minute it happened.

“Wow, really?” She waited a beat. “Is it . . . weird?”

“Yeah,” I said. “But not too bad.” She didn’t ask anything more about it, probably sensing I didn’t really want to get into the details. Bree was good like that. “What’re you up to?” I asked, and she sighed.

“Hiding in the bathroom. My dad’s in the kitchen with the Blond Hose Beast,” she said, referring to her father’s gum-cracking girlfriend. “She’s feeding him whipped cream off her
fingers
.” She made a gagging sound. “How about you?”

“Just looking through some of my mom’s things. You won’t
believe
the crap she was reading.” I told her about the stupid leaf sentence.

“What did she lose, do you think?” Bree asked. “Your dad?”

“I don’t know. Maybe.” I flipped through a few more pages, seeing her notes of
Yes! This is me!
in the margins next to certain
passages. “None of this makes any sense.” I threw the book down on my bed, and my eyes caught the corner of a piece of paper sticking out of the pages in the back. “Hold on a second,” I said to Bree. I pulled the slip of paper carefully out from the book, a tiny swirl of excitement in my belly. Maybe it was a clue. Maybe it would tell me what I needed to know. It was small, the size of a bookmark, and only had a few words scratched on it in Mama’s handwriting. “
She’s gone
,” I read aloud to Bree, “
but still, I feel her. I miss her so much.
”

“What?” Bree said. “Are you talking about your mom?”

I explained the slip of paper in the book, then read the words aloud to her again. “What do you think it means?” I asked her.

“Heck if I know,” Bree said. “This whole thing just keeps getting more confusing.” I’d told Bree about the letter from the doctor, but now, reading this note, it seemed like she might have been looking for a woman, not a man. But that didn’t mean it couldn’t be a doctor, I supposed. Mama wouldn’t
miss
a doctor, though. It really didn’t make any sense.

I ran my fingers over the words Mama had written. “I have to figure out who she was looking for.”

“Okay, but how?” Bree asked.

I took a deep breath. “I need to call my grandparents. They know what happened.”

“Yeah, but will they talk with you?” Bree sounded doubtful. “They’ve never even met you.”

“I know, but I have to at least try, right?” I was suddenly determined. “I’ll call you back.” We hung up, and before I lost my nerve, I scrolled through my list of contacts until I came to the one I’d labeled “Grandparents.” I’d dialed their number once before Mama had died, after she’d called them and ended up crying, thinking I could talk with them and get them to stop making
Mama so sad. But I hadn’t pressed send, too afraid to hear their voices. Too worried that they’d make me cry, too. I programmed the number into my phone, though, just in case I worked up the courage to try again.

Moving my thumb over the send button, I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, then pushed it a little harder than I probably had to. I wondered if they’d answer, and if they did, what exactly it was I wanted to say. I thought about the things my English teacher taught me to consider when doing research for something I had to write:
Who? What? When? Where? Why?
That last one,
that
was the real question. The only one I really needed to know.

The phone rang six times before someone picked up. “Hello?” A woman’s voice, frail and crackly.
My grandmother.

“Hi . . .” I faltered, unsure how, exactly, to begin this conversation. “Happy Thanksgiving.”
God, that was a stupid thing to say.

“Who is this?” She almost sounded scared, and I couldn’t understand why. Then I remembered that Dad told us she was a little confused, that sometimes this happened to people as they got older. I hoped she wasn’t too old to remember what I needed to know.