When Jaime and I got home, my mom was standing at the stove, crying. This wasn’t too shocking a scene; Mom’s a crier. For all I knew, these tears could be because we ran out of chicken broth. Even so, the odds of me keeping my promise to Madeline were looking slim. I was already worried that my request would break my mom’s heart. It would not be smart to bring it up when she’s sobbing into a pot of soup.
“Hi, Mom,” Jaime said. He put his backpack down on a kitchen chair and approached her cautiously.
Mom turned around. “Hi, sweetie,” she said with a sniffle. Her eyes were all pink and puffy. Maybe this wasn’t about chicken broth.
“What happened?” I asked.
Mom swallowed and gave me a sad smile. “Grandma Anna died.”
“Whoa,” I said. Is it bad that my first thought was that I definitely shouldn’t ask about finding my birth parents tonight? Is it worse that I felt relieved about that instead of sad about Grandma Anna? In my defense, Grandma Anna is actually my great-grandmother—my mom’s grandma—and I didn’t know her very well. She lives—lived, I guess—up in New York, and we live in a suburb of Baltimore. Mom’s always saying we should go visit her more, and we were actually planning to go see her in New York next month, around Thanksgiving. I guess we wouldn’t get to see her now. It hit me that that was probably making Mom extra sad. I thought about going over to hug her, but for some reason it seemed weird. The mom’s supposed to comfort the kid, not the other way around.
“I’m sorry,” I said, tentatively.
Mom sniffled again, and I could see that fresh tears were about to fall.
Jaime was starting to get sad too. He’s super tuned in to Mom’s emotions.
I moved to put my arm around Jaime, and Mom came over and hugged us both. “It’s okay,” she said, restoring the proper giving-comfort order. She gave Jaime a kiss on the forehead. “She was eighty-five. She lived a very full life.”
“How did she die?” Jaime asked.
“Peacefully,” Mom said. “In her sleep.”
That’s how I want to die too. Asleep. I’ve thought about this before. “That’s good,” I said.
“Very good,” Mom agreed.
I heard the front door. Dad was home. He came into the kitchen and wrapped his skinny arms around Mom and, by default, Jaime and me.
Mom sighed and pulled out of the full-family hug. She wiped her eyes, sniffed, and stood up straight. “The funeral’s tomorrow,” she told us. “We’re going to have to drive to New York tonight, after dinner.”
“Tonight?” Jaime said.
“Tonight,” Dad confirmed. “We’ll probably stay through the weekend, so figure three or four days. Why don’t you two go pack?”
Three or four days in New York. Funeral, family, sad stuff. There was no way I’d be able to bring up anything about searching for my birth family until this whole thing was over. Off the hook for now, and with a perfectly good excuse.
I climbed the stairs slowly. What sort of clothes do you wear to a funeral? I wasn’t sure Dad would know, and I couldn’t exactly ask Mom. I figured I’d text Madeline—she could ask her mom—but when I got to my room, I found my black skirt and blue collared shirt already on my bed. I peeked in Jaime’s room. Mom had laid out his suit.
That was just so Mom, to think of us, even when her grandma had just died. I thought about her downstairs, and Dad hugging her, and I got this warm pang in my chest. The kind of pang that made me feel guilty that I want to know about my biological family at all.