The door squeaks on its hinges. Grace waves hello. It’s so odd that Noah is answering Lee’s door, that they are packing up her friend’s belongings to haul off, donate, or sell. She motions behind her. “Yard looks great.”
The front has been freshly mowed. The weeds have been pulled, the hedges trimmed, and the walkway swept and tidied. Lee’s lease is null and void at the end of the month, but they still have to spruce it up to re-rent.
Grace steps inside. The last week blurs from memory. Only a few days ago, she stood in front of the judge in her best suit, guardianship papers in hand. Her whole support system waited in the wings for the good news. It had been a frighteningly easy process. The judge had rushed through the docket, barely making eye contact over his spectacles, before cracking his gavel for the next case. Grace had glanced at her lawyer to make sure she understood what had just happened, and Kim had simply nodded and shuffled papers back into a file.
“And that’s that. He’s all yours.”
Grace had rushed out of the sterile room into the hall to find Mason obsessively bouncing a ball against the wall, while Alice, Carol, and Noah met her with expectant faces. Afterward, they’d gathered at Shelby Bottoms with muffins and coffee under Lee’s favorite tree to scatter a few ashes. She’d given the urn to Mason, and it was the first time she thought he might actually be able to get closure.
Now, Grace steps into Lee’s kitchen and closes the door. It still smells like her: hair products and stale coffee. She and Noah have already packed as much as they can, the furniture sold, donated, or dumped. Tonight is for stacking boxes and dismantling her studio, which hasn’t yet been touched. “How are you feeling, gorgeous?” He kisses her and pulls her close. “I missed you today.”
“Me too.” Their wild night from the bar comes back into focus. The uninhibited sex. Her requests. The physical pleasure. Those moments have been too few and far between since the pregnancy and Lee’s death.
“Want something to drink?” He releases her and opens a cabinet.
“Sure, water’s fine.”
He pours her a glass. “How’s Mason?”
“Asleep. Alice came over to watch him.”
“Good. Hope he sleeps tonight.”
“You and me both.” Mason’s night terrors have challenged her previously uninterrupted sleep. Lee used to talk about them, but she never understood their severity or prevalence. She’s been researching different remedies. She assumes, like with everything else he’s dealing with, that it will just take time. She takes the chilled glass, and the icy water shocks her lips. He slices a lemon on the cutting board and squeezes in a few drops.
“Fancy,” she jokes.
“I think we’ve made good progress, don’t you?” They walk from room to room. Most of Lee’s belongings have been stripped, tossed, or boxed.
“Shall we tackle the studio?”
“Yep.” Noah stops in the kitchen and refills her glass. “I was thinking once we get that cleared out, we can just stack all of the boxes in there, since it still has the garage door.”
“Sure.” Grace imagines loading all the boxes into a van and taking them somewhere. Never coming back to this house. Never driving down this street. The finality of it consumes her.
In the studio, they clear the boxes to one side of the room. As she pushes cardboard across cement, memories hurl themselves to the surface of her brain. “I can’t believe we’re doing this.”
Noah lowers a stack and wipes his hands on his jeans. “I know. I can’t either.”
“She really liked you, you know.” Grace hasn’t said the words; hasn’t talked much about Lee since she died, hasn’t wanted to admit that she is really gone and Grace is here in her place, in her house, about to mother her child.
He straightens. “I really liked her too.” He groans as he heaves another stack along the far wall. “Just not in the way she expected.”
She appreciates his honesty. “True. It’s so strange that you both grew up here and never met each other before I introduced you.” It’s strange that you never made a move is what she really means. “Did you ever know any of her friends or anything?”
“Not that I know of.” He shrugs. “We didn’t run in the same circles.”
Grace tries to imagine Lee and Noah going for coffee or hanging out, but can’t. She busies herself with packing products into their own boxes and labels them to donate to local salons. She tapes the top of one and carries it to the wall.
They pack in silence over the next hour, and Grace wishes she’d left the speakers hooked up. She finally swipes her phone, opens Spotify, and cranks the volume to capacity. “Well, that’s far from impressive,” she jokes.
“Here.” Noah plucks a plastic cup from Lee’s desk and deposits the phone into it. The sound amplifies through the room. “Instant speaker.”
“Thanks.” She looks around. “Want to take a break for a second?” She sits cross-legged on the rug. “You know, I bought this rug with Lee. I joked that it was like having a giant sheep at work.” She runs her fingers through the threads. “She didn’t want a rug because of all the hair she had to sweep, but I insisted vacuuming would be less work. And the cement would get so cold on her bare feet in the winter. She always preferred being barefoot.” She chokes on her words and shakes her head. “Sorry.”
Noah sits beside her. “It really doesn’t seem real, I know. I don’t think it ever does.” He glances at her. “When you lose someone, I mean.”
She wipes away her tears. “You mean Wyatt?”
“Yeah.”
“It’s crazy to me we both lost siblings. That’s rare.”
Noah hesitates. “How come you never talk about her?”
Noah has asked a few questions about her sister, but Grace always deflects. “Same reason you don’t probably. Too painful.”
“Makes sense.” He glances at her. “Were you close?”
She shrugs and plunges her fingers back into the rug. “At one time, yeah. But you know how it is when everyone in your family is so consumed with their own lives. You miss things.”
Noah exhales and nods. “You certainly do.”
“Do you think you ended up working with autistic kids specifically because of Wyatt?” She releases the rug and folds her hands into her lap.
“Probably. But I’ve always been good with kids. Kids like Wyatt and Mason. I have a knack for it, I guess.”
“I can see that. You always seem in control.”
“Oh, I am.” He laughs.
She cranes her head toward the painted ceiling. “It was all so simple when I first met Lee. Mason was just a baby, and she was still working at the salon. She was happy. Everything was going so well for her. I didn’t know she was a recovering alcoholic at that point—she was always so good at keeping things to herself—but, I don’t know.” She sighs. “We had a good time together. She was easy to be around. She fit into our group.” She pauses. “Now, every morning I wake up, I think, ‘Did that really happen?’ The thought of never telling her something that happened, or laughing with her, or getting coffee and going for a walk … I mean, you should have seen her at the bottom of that mountain, Noah.” She shakes her head at the memory. “And Mason.”
Noah dangles his scotch glass between the fingers of his right hand and loops his left around her shoulders. “Mason will be fine. He’s doing well.”
Grace massages the back of her own neck. “He is, isn’t he?”
Her cell blasts through the studio, cutting into the current song, and startles them both. She grabs the phone from the cup. “It’s Alice.” She forces herself to stay calm. Knowing Alice, she probably just wants to know where she keeps the good wine. She swipes to answer and instantly hears Mason screaming in the background.
“Alice? What’s going on?”
“I’m so sorry,” Alice hisses. “He woke up. He’s so upset. I didn’t know what to do. I…”
“I’ll be right there. Okay? Stay calm.” Grace disconnects the call. “He woke up.”
“Should I come with you?”
Grace stands and gathers her things. “You don’t mind?”
“Of course not. I’ll drive.”
Grace decides not to worry about her car as they pile into his and speed through the neighborhood. She shouldn’t have left Mason with Alice. She should be there for him, even if she does have to get things done at Lee’s. Twenty minutes later, Noah kills the engine in her driveway and shoves the gear into park.
She shuts the passenger door. The leaves blow gently against the trees, even though the air’s too warm for this time of night. She can’t even make out the stars from the thick smudge of clouds overhead. Mason’s voice rocks her walls, even from outside. She checks her watch. Has he been screaming this entire time? Noah enters before her. She takes a deep breath, prepares herself, and steps inside.