Chapter 8

N icola’s backyard wedding was beautiful. It reminded me some of the last one I’d attended, Liv’s, because it felt the same: casual, easy, and full of a lot of happiness and love. They were married by an older guy with a long white beard, kind of the way I’d always pictured Father Time (if he’d spent a lot of that time in a tattoo parlor), and when he pronounced them as married, my sister and her new husband kissed for long enough that the officiant had to tap Jude on the shoulder, and the two neighbor kids who had served as their attendants made yakking noises, pretending to throw up until their mom told them to knock it off. That woman was bawling but I thought it was from happiness, and the rest of us were, too.

Juliet had enlisted Nicola’s old friend Ava to help out with the lightning-speed preparations, and she was an excellent party planner. Plus, she’d just done her own sister’s wedding, so she was up on all the important details. Somehow, in less than a week she’d managed to get a ton of flowers for not a ton of money, to borrow tables and chairs, and to force Nicola to get her hair cut and styled. She had also found a caterer. But the food at the dinner…

“This is delicious and it tastes so familiar,” I said as I took a bite of pasta.

“Really?” Ava asked. “It’s from a restaurant in Corktown called Amunì. It’s my favorite place to eat.”

So that was what Granger had meant when he’d texted, “Congratulations.” I (rudely) hadn’t responded. “I’ve been there,” I said, but this reminded me that the first time I’d eaten at Amunì had been on my birthday, with Briggs. The food lost its taste in my mouth and my stomach rolled.

“Addie, are you ok?” Ava asked, her face clouding with concern. She put her hand on my arm. “You just turned as white as milk.”

“I’m hot,” I said, which made no sense and Ava would have known it. First, it wasn’t warm at all today and also, she’d known me since I was little. She would have been aware that I flushed a bit in the heat, instead of going pale. “I’ll sit in the shade.” I moved quickly away from the rest of the guests and toward one of Nicola’s trees, where I sank into a chair. I watched the small group of guests laughing and moving to the music that the officiant had started to play. He was also a DJ? Anyway, he could really dance, and he and another guy in a wheelchair were going wild on a platform in the grass.

Everyone was enjoying the party and celebrating my big sister and her new husband, and I felt terrible that I was sitting over here and that I’d spent the past week faking it. The news about the car crash had gone viral because—well, of course it had, but Briggs and his mom still hadn’t been named in the press as the victims. I hadn’t wanted anything to take away from Nicola and her wedding and I’d been praying constantly that their identities wouldn’t get out. Maybe that wasn’t very nice to the deceased because they deserved recognition and mourning, but I was having a hard time telling what was right and wrong at the moment. Because yes, I was very sorry that they had died and especially in that very unusual way, but when I thought about my life without Briggs—

“Addie!” my sister Juliet hissed. She crept over to meet me under the tree and then looked around, shooting furtive glances toward the rest of the guests as she slouched into the chair next to mine.

“Why are you sneaking?” I asked her, and she froze and then sat up straight.

“I don’t know,” she confessed. “It feels like I’m a spy or something. We have this secret information but nobody else does.”

We did have a secret, because JuJu was the only one whom I’d told about what had happened and I knew that she’d been voraciously reading all the information that was available about the incident and about African scavenging birds. But as hard as it had probably been, she’d managed not to reveal it to anyone, including our mom. They were really close and Juliet always blabbed to her, so I was glad and told her so.

“Thanks for keeping it to yourself, JuJu,” I said, and as they had many times over the past week, my eyes filled with tears again.

“Oh, Addie,” she said, and hugged me. “I can’t believe this happened to you! Or, to him, I guess,” she modified. “You always hear that what goes around comes around, and you know that Mom believes so strongly in karma, but vultures? Wow.”

“Ok…”

“It reminds me of ancient Greek stuff, like from those books that Sophie loved. Doesn’t it sound like the guy who kept getting his innards pecked out by the big bird? What was his name? That story made me so sick and she always had such relish in her voice when she read it to us.” She wrinkled her nose and immediately continued. “But you did love Briggs, and you were serious about being with him. You even wanted to marry him,” she reminded me. “And speaking of Greek myths, his mother was a Harpy, and—”

“Ok, Juliet,” I said, cutting off her sentence. None of that was true! Well, it was possible that his mother had been a Harpy in the Greek mythology-sense of the word. The manner of his death did seem a little…allegorical? But as far as me loving him and wanting to marry him, she wasn’t correct.

“JuJu, I have to tell you something,” I said, my voice wobbling, but at that moment, our mother approached.

For someone who had been pushing marriage on all of us for quite a while, she hadn’t been overly happy with Nicola’s wedding, and she let us know that (again) right off the bat.

“If someone had bothered to inform me about this event with a little more notice, then I could have made sure there were tents for the fairer-skinned people,” she commented to Juliet. “Addie already looks like she’s sunburned.”

“I’m fine, Mom,” I said, and waved my hand in front of my face to cool away any flush due to my rising emotions.

“Well, I could have helped in other ways,” she told both of us. “I certainly could have worn something new.” She flounced angrily onto the chair where my sister already sat. Since there was only room for one, JuJu stood up instead.

“It was such a surprise,” she told Mom. “But isn’t it great? And you look beautiful.”

Our mother always looked beautiful, because she just was. She had thick, dark hair that hung in loose, shiny waves that were exactly like Nicola’s, except my sister’s were auburn. In terms of features, though, the seven of us kids mostly took after our dad, and I’d always been sorry about that. Not that my sisters weren’t gorgeous, because I totally believed that they were, and my brother (who hadn’t flown in for today) was handsome. But I’d also thought that our mom was just like a princess in a fairy tale, with the same kind of delicate, ethereal beauty. It was obvious what had drawn my dad to her, and since they had nothing in common, I thought it might have been the only thing that kept them together, too.

“She hid this from me!” my mom said next, and maybe that was the thing that actually bothered her. “I can’t believe that she didn’t tell her own mother about her love life.”

Juliet and I exchanged a look. “We’re all adults,” my sister defended us, and that was when we heard a small commotion and noticed that our youngest sister, Grace, had gotten her head stuck in the crotch of a tree. Fortunately, Nicola had years of experience in dealing with our mishaps, so the problem resolved quickly and with a minimum of fuss and baby oil. Grace’s pretty hair looked worse for wear and so did the dress she had on…it was then that I recognized that Grace was wearing my dress, the one that I’d bought to wear to Liv’s wedding but then hadn’t been able to find when I got back to my apartment. That explained why she was showing so much leg; I was the second-shortest Curran sister after Nicola and she was the second-tallest after Juliet.

“You have to give that back,” I told her, but she was unfazed by my comment and also by the greasy scratches on her face, and she returned to the dance floor.

Unfortunately, my mom wasn’t put off from her rant by that incident, and she hopped right back onto the topic the moment that we returned to our chairs. “All that time, I was talking to Nicky about getting a boyfriend, and she had one!” she complained. “Why didn’t she just say so?”

“Sometimes it’s hard to tell you things,” I suggested carefully, which wasn’t what she wanted to hear.

“We’re very open with each other! I share so much with you girls,” she retorted. “I told you about your brother’s wife having a baby, and I wasn’t supposed to say a word. I made the announcement in secret, though.”

Juliet and I looked at each other again. First of all, Mom hadn’t announced our future niece or nephew, my brother’s baby, in secret: she’d had the news written on a cake that she’d further decorated with sparklers, and she hadn’t only told us girls. The entire city of Detroit knew at this point. Also, it wasn’t Patrick’s “wife” who was pregnant, or even his girlfriend. He’d never been married and his actual girlfriend had left him before this pregnancy had occurred. According to Juliet, his twin, he’d gone on a bit of a post-breakup sex spree in San Francisco, where he lived. The mother of his baby was a woman he’d briefly known there, “known” in a Biblical sense but not enough to have “known” her name when she’d contacted him and said that she was pregnant with his child.

“They were together long enough for him to drop off some sperm, and then he ran for the door,” my sister Nicola had summed it up on the night that our mom had dropped the bomb of the pregnancy news. Nicola had then bullied our brother into insisting on a paternity test, and that had recently come back positive for Curran genes. We would, it turned out, have a baby in the family.

And weddings and babies were all that my mom had talked about for months, but she still wasn’t happy with this situation. Her first grandchild would apparently be born in California, a whole country way from Michigan, and to a woman she didn’t know and might not ever meet. This wedding wasn’t what she’d wanted either, since Nicola hadn’t included her in the preparations and hadn’t seemed to need her help at all. She had a lot to say about those problems and several others, and it felt like the only way I could escape her outpouring of grievances was by leaving the party. I couldn’t do that, though, not until the newlywed couple had taken off on a mini-honeymoon with all of us clapping and cheering for them in the street, and not until everyone had pitched in to clean up their yard and return it to a state that would near Nicola’s high standards. My job had been to organize that effort, and I thought it went well.

But finally, I ran out to my car in the cool darkness and got myself free of the celebration and of the complaining, both of which were pushing me to the limit. Maybe I’d already gone over that line, because I was crying again as I started the engine. No one deserved happiness more than my oldest sister, and I was so glad that she’d found it. But I had been the biggest fraud in the world, sitting there with a smile on my face and pretending that Briggs hadn’t met that terrible end…

I drove off into the night but instead of going home, I got onto the Southfield Freeway toward I-96 and I headed downtown. Corktown was busy on this Friday night but I pulled around through the alley and parked in the lot behind Amunì, which was quiet except for some squeaking that I was afraid might be rats. I hurried, using my phone as a flashlight, and went into the front door rather than sneaking in through the entrance at the back.

“I’m sorry, our kitchen is closing soon and I won’t be able to seat you,” the host told me as I entered.

“Ok, that’s ok. I’m a friend—” That sounded presumptuous. “I know the owner—” That sounded braggy. “Is Granger around? Granger Moore?” I asked finally. “My name’s Addie.”

“I’ll get him,” she said, and walked off to do that. I watched her disappear into the kitchen and then he came out through the swinging door, moving very fast.

“Addie? Is something wrong?” he asked me.

I wasn’t sure how he knew that, but I nodded miserably and he told me to come with him. The restaurant was dim and only a few tables were filled at this hour, but I kept my head down to hide any tearstains or light blush on my cheeks. I also didn’t look over at where Briggs and I had sat on the night that now seemed so fateful and momentous. Disastrous.

Granger led me to his office and I sat across from him in a chair that he had added to the décor, one I recognized because it was the same kind he had in his house. “What’s going on?” he asked me.

Where to start? We hadn’t discussed any of the major events that had happened lately. “I guess you know that my sister Nicola had her wedding today,” I stated. “It was very unexpected for the rest of us.”

“I did hear that,” he said, “because we catered it.” He paused. “Do you hate the guy or something?”

“I don’t know Jude very well but so far, I’ve liked him a lot. He seems so nice and my sister is crazy about him. He feels the same way, it’s obvious, and their charts align amazingly. I think they’re going to be really happy.”

“Ok,” he said, and got up. He left the room and when he returned, he had an industrial-sized roll of toilet paper with him. “Here you go,” he told me as he put it on the edge of the desk, and then he pulled a garbage can around next to my chair.

“Thank you.” I blew my nose, using a few squares, and then tossed them. “I’m not crying because of Nicola. I’m very, very happy for her.”

“This is happiness?” he asked, and then frowned scarily when I started to cry for real. “Fuck. Don’t do that,” he ordered, which didn’t make me stop. “I mean…do you want dessert?”

“Why would I want that?” I gasped.

“I don’t know. I used to eat popsicles when I…just tell me what’s wrong with you.”

I took a shuddering breath and then announced, “Briggs is dead.”

I knew that the statement must have surprised him but his face didn’t give away too much. “Repeat that,” he told me, so I did. Immediately, he unlocked a drawer in the desk, took out the laptop I’d seen before, and started typing. “Well, I’ll be damned,” he said slowly. “He is dead. He and Suzann Skurwysyn.”

“Where are you reading that? Their names are in the news?”

He typed for another moment. “No, not yet. The police plan to release the information tomorrow, though.” His eyes moved, flicking over the screen. “Bird predation? No, scavenging,” he answered his own question. “I thought that Rüppell's vultures were only in Africa—oh, I see.”

Finally he looked up. “That’s a hell of a way to go.”

“How did you find that information?” I asked.

“I have some connections in law enforcement,” he explained and then shook his head and said, “Vultures? Jesus, that’s a terrible thing, even for someone like…it’s a terrible thing. How are you doing?”

“Not very well,” I said. “I didn’t tell anyone in my family besides Juliet, because I found out about it at the same time that our other sister announced her wedding. I didn’t want to ruin it but I could really use some support.” I took more toilet paper and rubbed my eyes. “Usually, when something bad happens, we rally together and I miss that right now.”

“Now that the wedding is over and the story is going to come out, you can tell them and they can help.”

Could they? The situation was going to be hard to explain, if I even wanted make an attempt. I nodded, though, and was about to speak, when someone knocked on his office door. “Granger, the oven,” a woman said when she stuck her head in. She stared at him pointedly then disappeared.

“Fuck.” Frustration showed on his normally impassive face. “I have to take a look, but stay there and I’ll be back soon,” he told me. “This won’t take long.”

I was used to him saying that, though, and things taking a very long time. I was also questioning a lot why I’d come here, because it was totally out of my way and obviously, I was interrupting his work. Also, now that I was talking to him about it, I felt both disloyal and kind of creepy. Was this some kind of play for sympathy? Why would I tell my troubles to a person whom I didn’t know very well, anyway? Was I unconsciously announcing to him that I was free to…

Ugh, no. Time to leave, I told myself, and I unrolled a lot of TP to use in the car before I went. I heard Granger’s voice saying something about heating elements but I walked quickly down the hallway past the kitchen, leaving by the back door, and then I got into my car and went home.

Things weren’t much better there. I did have a supply of tissues with lotion which felt better on my skin than the commercial toilet paper that Granger had given me, but being alone in my apartment felt worse on my heart and mind. I carefully took off my wedding outfit, Sophie’s pretty green dress that I had borrowed again since I hadn’t been able to find my own dress that Grace had stolen, and I sat on my loveseat instead of getting into my bed. I couldn’t stand the thought of lying there for hours, sleepless. Whenever I had been able to conk out, I’d been having terrible dreams about giant birds attacking me—I never should have looked at pictures of those Rüppell’s vultures—so I’d been waking up a lot. I’d also struggled to get to sleep in the first place because I couldn’t turn off my racing thoughts.

So it was better not to be in bed except now I was sitting directly across from the picture that I’d gotten for myself last Christmas as a present from Briggs. It featured me kissing his cheek and him not scowling, and I’d blown it up a little and put it in a frame because it was the best one of the two of us from all the time we’d been together. Usually, he was looking unhappy or I was looking slightly flushed or both, but not in this one. I’d really liked it.

He seemed to be staring at me now, though, and I thought again of what his aunt had said on the phone. It had taken a long time for the first responders to collect all the parts…

The knock on my door startled me into almost leaping out of my apartment window, but it really wasn’t that unusual for neighbors to come by. I was younger than most of the people in this building by fifty or so years, and sometimes the other residents of my floor wanted to chat or needed my help carrying, lifting, or climbing up to get something. When I peeked through the peephole, though, it wasn’t a neighbor. I slid the chain, unlocked the bolt, moved the wedge, and finally turned the door handle.

“Granger?” I asked. “Didn’t you get my note?”

He nodded. “I did. You wrote, ‘Leaving now, sorry, bye.’”

“I didn’t want to get in the way. The ‘sorry’ was because I felt bad that I’d interrupted you while you were at your job,” I explained. “I didn’t mean that you needed to follow me.”

“No, you didn’t write anything about that and I didn’t know you had gone until one of the dishwashers said he’d seen a red-haired woman skulking around the back parking lot in the dark.” He paused. “I’m going to put better lights back there.”

“I wasn’t skulking,” I said. “I was crying and trying to be fast.” Speed and stealth didn’t come naturally to me. “You can come in,” I invited, since he was already here. “Welcome.”

Granger had never visited my apartment before and I watched him take it in, his eyes moving quickly around the space. I had a studio, so the bed was against the wall in the corner near the window, and the living room loveseat was part of my dining room furniture because it pulled up to a table. That table was also my office, because the chair on the other side was a desk chair. Everything was multi-functional, like how I used most of the cupboards on the kitchen wall for clothes storage. The bathroom, though, was totally separate, which was very nice feature. I did use the cabinet under the sink to store important papers, but that was only due to the fact that the filing cabinet that was my bedside table contained laundry supplies. Maybe I could have organized it better.

“This is where you had the flood,” he noted, looking up at the ceiling. The brown stains and bubbled plaster that decorated it weren’t that far above his head; I had never noticed how low it was, and really, the room looked very small, too. I supposed that was what happened when your visitor was the size of a bear.

“It wasn’t really a flood,” I corrected. “It was more like a slow ocean tide. It didn’t rush in and fill the rooms but it kept on coming. After everything dried, my landlord paid for a new mattress and new flooring, which I enjoy a lot.”

We both looked down at the short beige loops beneath our feet, which was a huge improvement from the avocado green, sculptured carpet that had been there before. “Things were pretty wet, but luckily it was clean water,” I said. “My mom likes to say the stuff about the flood and I guess I’ve been repeating it. She only talks about it because she really enjoys drama.”

“She might have a lot to say when she hears about how the Skurwysyns met their end.”

She definitely would, which was something I wasn’t looking forward to. “I know,” I agreed dejectedly. “She gets…bigger when anything important happens in our lives, so Nicola, Sophie, Juliet and I tend to downplay things. Grace never notices any problems herself and Patrick’s more like Mom, with how he gets…bigger.”

“You mean taking attention for themselves?”

I hadn’t meant exactly that, but maybe attention was part of it. “I think she’ll be genuinely sad, too,” I told him. “She never talked crud about Briggs like my sisters sometimes did.”

“Your sisters hated the guy,” Granger stated.

“I don’t know if they ‘hated’ him,” I answered quickly, but I remembered what Juliet had said about Prometheus and his innards getting pecked at by the bird. She hadn’t seemed sad as she talked about it. I took another lotion-imbued tissue and blew my nose. “My mom was dramatic today, too. It was a beautiful wedding even though she didn’t like it. She kept complaining about her allergies acting up, but she doesn’t really have any. Sophie stepped in and kept everything squelched before Nicola heard, though. That was her job.”

“Your sister’s job is squelching?”

“I mean for today. Nicola usually bosses us, but Sophie took over for the wedding and gave us all things to do,” I explained. “Juliet did the set-up with one of Nic’s old friends, Brenna took over all the bridal hair, makeup, and attire. She even found our grandma’s pretty garter, light blue for luck. Sophie’s assignment for herself was stopping our mother from doing anything that would have detracted from Nicola, and she would have gotten physical if she had to.” My second-oldest sister and our mom didn’t have a very friendly relationship.

“Your mother sounds like a…handful,” he finished, but I got the idea that hadn’t been the word on his mind originally and I realized that I was giving him a very bad impression of my family.

“She wouldn’t have ruined things on purpose,” I added, “but she might have claimed some kind of illness or accident that Nicola would have had to check out, or she might have started asking a lot of questions about why they were getting married so fast. It was bad enough for Nicola that Grace got her head stuck in a tree, and Grace’s entire job was not to do anything weird. But Nic didn’t get any baby oil on her dress because Brenna was paying close attention.”

“It sounds like an interesting wedding,” he said. He glanced around the room. “Can I sit down?”

Now we both looked askance at the loveseat, the largest piece of furniture besides the bed. Yes, it was physically possible, but as far as doing it comfortably? I had a lot of doubts. He tried it, though, and I took the corner of the mattress. “Why did you come over tonight? You could have texted,” I pointed out.

“I could have.” Granger looked around again. “Does that window lock?”

“No, but I have the dowels stuck in the sides so that no one can move it up or down.” I’d placed those sticks there after Briggs and I had gotten into the argument about our break-up, I recalled, because I’d been afraid of him. The memory made me take another tissue.

“I came over because I was worried that you had left when you were so emotional.” He said the word with a funny twist of his mouth, a tiny movement that either signified confusion or disdain. “Yeah, I could have texted,” he continued, “but I wanted to see you in person. I realize that I didn’t respond well when I read the report on the Skurwysyns.”

“That’s ok,” I answered. “It’s always hard to know what to say in these situations.” I paused as I considered my particular situation. “This one is more unusual than most.”

“I would expect interest to pick up again tomorrow when the police release their names,” he agreed. “Once that’s out, you should be prepared for questions. Take down your social media, block unknown numbers, all those things. You don’t feature in his online presence at all, which will help for a while.”

How did he know that I didn’t appear in Briggs’ posts? They were all about fishing trips and Michigan State football. “Oh, I don’t think that anyone will contact me,” I said, shaking my head. “His aunt has already told me that I won’t be part of communication with the press or with the authorities. She doesn’t want me involved at all and that’s fine. I would rather not be a part of it.”

“It sounds like she wants to make sure that you’re not angling for a share of the settlement from the trucking company and the bird sanctuary.”

“I wouldn’t want a share! I wouldn’t want to profit from Briggs’ death,” I answered immediately. How unfair would that have been if I took money because he was gone, when that had been what I’d wanted…no, I hadn’t wanted him to die! I just wanted to be free…oh, sugar. I took another tissue, and then another, and soon I had a pile of tear-soaked balls of tree pulp mounding higher on the floor.

Granger got up and carefully seated himself on the bed. Just as carefully, he put his arm around me. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m sorry this happened because it made you—” He broke off as he eyed the tissue pile. “Upset,” he finished.

When he’d first sat down, I’d frozen, becoming totally motionless the moment that I felt the contact between our bodies. But then I couldn’t seem to help myself. I turned my face into his white button-down and grabbed onto the front of it with my hand, and I cried and cried against him.

“It’s so awful,” I sniffled after a moment. “It’s so terrible, and I feel so guilty.”

“That’s how I felt, too.”

That made me sit up and pull back. “What?”

“When my wife passed away, I felt incredibly guilty,” he told me. “I was out of the country when it happened and maybe if I’d been here, she wouldn’t have been driving alone. Maybe I could have done something or if I had been behind the wheel instead, it might have gone differently.”

“It was an accident,” I reminded him, but he shook his head.

“She should have been in a safer car. She drove such a piece of shit, way too old for airbags and modern safety features. It was due to me that she was even in Detroit that day. She had planned to visit her parents in Italy but I was able to come back, so she stayed so we could see each other and talk about things.”

I shook my head again. “But now, after time has passed, you know that you don’t need to blame yourself.” His feelings were understandable, even if they were misguided. That wasn’t true of other people, though. Some people deserved to feel guilty, didn’t they?

“I’ve told myself a lot of times that I shouldn’t,” he answered. “She drove that car purposefully, and she wouldn’t accept me buying her a new one. She decided not to leave for Palermo even though I’d told her—” He stopped dead. “We were talking about you and your boyfriend, not me.”

“I don’t want to talk about him, though,” I said, and stood up. It was not only guilt that I was feeling at the moment, but also a whole lot of disloyalty. It felt like I was playing on Granger’s sympathies from his own loss in order to…what was my goal, exactly? Why had I gone to his restaurant? I looked over at the picture of my dead boyfriend in the frame, not scowling and almost smiling at the lens, and I reached for another tissue.

“I probably shouldn’t have come here and bothered you,” Granger said, and he stood, too. “I was sorry that I’d done the same thing again, that I’d left you alone in that office and talked shit about your boyfriend. And I was sorry for you in general,” he added.

Oh. He wasn’t comforting me out of friendship or even a feeling of camaraderie, but because I was pathetic. “You don’t need to feel that way, either,” I said. “I had a lot of fun planting out your yard, and I definitely like bowling with you, but I think we were right the first time. We’re busy people, me less so now that Briggs is gone.” I grabbed another tissue. “My grandma says that there’s no use trying to get blood from a turnip. In this case, we’re trying to force a friendship turnip to bleed, and it won’t. And that’s kind of disgusting, anyway.”

“No.”

“Excuse me?”

“No, I’m not so busy that I can’t spend time with someone when her boyfriend dies and she’s crying in my office. I’m not that big of a jackoff. This whole week, you knew he was dead and I think you were still showing up at my house to water my plants.”

“You have to water them when they’re newly planted,” I explained. “And you’re so busy—”

“No,” he repeated. “I’m not so busy that I can’t stand outside with a hose. And I’m also not so much of a jackoff to make you do that, either.” He paused. “Did you eat the food I made for your sister’s wedding?”

I thought back and I did remember tasting it. “It was very good, but I wasn’t hungry.”

“Are you now?”

“I don’t really want to go back to Amunì,” I said, because I wasn’t up to sitting in that office and looking at his beautiful wife anymore.

“I meant that I could make something here.” He glanced over at the short wall of my kitchen where I did have a full-sized fridge (or almost that big). But my stove was two petite burners and they were very close together. Also, there was no oven except for the toaster kind, and the sink was large enough to wash pots but only if they were fairly small, like no larger than a mug.

“We could go to my house, if we stop and get groceries,” he said, shaking his head at his words. “I only had that fortune cookie.”

“I’m still not hungry, anyway,” I assured him. I really didn’t want that cookie.

“Take-out,” he announced. “I’ll get something good and bring it back to you. What do you like to eat around here?”

“You really don’t have to,” I assured him further. “I bet you just want to go home and not have to deal with a lot of soggy tissues.” We both looked at the pile, which had grown very tall.

“I’ll get you another box when I pick up the food,” he suggested.

“You don’t have to get food because you feel sorry for me,” I said. “I’m sad and confused and everything seems terrible right now, but I think I’ll be ok. Pretty soon, I won’t even need another box of tissues.”

“Addie,” he said, and it looked like he was going to argue with me again. But then he nodded instead. “I got very pissed off when people kept trying to force me to do shit when Benedetta died. I’ll leave you alone.”

“Thank you,” I said, and walked to the door.

“But I’ll take care of my yard. You don’t have to come to my house for that,” he said. “You have enough to worry about right now.”

“I don’t mind doing it. I like watering,” I told him. I liked being outside in the cool morning air, just me and the plants and the city waking up. Over the past week when my mind had been jangling with anxiety, I’d found it very soothing. “Thanks for stopping by here, too.”

He’d stopped again, this time in my doorway. “There’s nothing I can do,” he stated, and then looked at me for confirmation.

“No, nothing,” I answered, nodding.

“I was thinking about how you said before that you didn’t like change. When we first went out, you told me that you like things to stay the same, uninterrupted. This is going to change a lot for you.”

“I know. It already has.”

But Granger shook his head. “Besides the emotional aspect, death upends everything for the living,” he said. “Everything flips in a moment, and it’s a massive, earthshaking shift. You know that you’ll have to adjust to being alone again, to being single. But there are so many details that you never considered. You don’t know the password to something stupid, or which dry cleaner does your shirts. Your day is different because you don’t have to make time to call anymore. You don’t have to worry about using too much hot water in the morning or that your alarm will be too loud. You can stop buying the expensive kind of coffee, since you don’t care…”

He had been staring toward the window as he spoke, but he paused and then focused on me. “That’s the practical side of death and it probably sounds callous, but it’s what comes next. After the shock, it’s the adjustment to being alone again, to not being a partner anymore. It’s a big, big change.”

“He was my boyfriend, not my husband,” I said. “Our lives were entwined but not so much as that. It’s going to be hard—I probably don’t even know how hard, but I’ll be all right. Thank you for worrying.”

“Ok.”He nodded slightly.“Ok.Goodbye, Addie.”

“Bye.”

I listened to his feet bypass the elevator, which was out of service, and open the squeaky door to the staircase. Then I went to my window so I could watch the parking lot. He strode out of the front door and quickly over to his car, but when he got there, he stopped and turned back toward the building and his chin tilted up. I raised my hand and I thought I saw him nod back in acknowledgment, and then he left.

I sat down on the loveseat and looked across at the picture of Briggs. He was trapped there, frozen in time, and I tried again to convince myself that this would be the only way that I’d ever see him again. I still couldn’t seem to make myself accept that he was really gone and that his absence would last forever. And I couldn’t seem to stop the brief flicker of emotion that I felt when I thought it. I didn’t want to focus on that because it said a lot about me, and what it said made me ashamed.

The emotion I felt was relief, relief that my boyfriend was dead. He’d solved my problems by dying and it made me glad, and that was a secret I would take to my own grave.