Chapter 3

After shufflingbetween her father's and the hospital for the past two weeks, seeing Oma's house feels like coming home.

Sara lingers in the car; the radio turned low and the engine humming. The bright teal rocking chairs she helped her paint three summers ago are still on the front porch and the house's cheery yellow siding with white trim still makes Sara think of Better Homes Garden magazines. She's planted a mix of brightly colored dahlias and foxglove in the flower beds this year—petunias in the window boxes. Sara releases a heavy sigh, feeling the tension in her neck and shoulders relax. If happy were a place, it would be her grandmother's house.

She turns off the engine and unplugs her phone from the charger. Sara doesn't bother checking for messages—the last two weeks have had her phone on loud and her nerves so raw that missing a text is next to impossible. Jen, her best friend, reaches out at least once a day just to check in and let her know she's only a drive or a phone call away. Sara responds to her faithfully, but never takes her up on her offer. It's easier to hold herself together when she doesn't have to explain her feelings out loud. Just typing out the words with her thumbs makes the tightness in her chest double and her eyes burn.

He still doesn't remember me. They don't know if he ever will.

He hates me. Why does he hate me?

What am I going to do?

Jen doesn't give her any answers (how could she?) but every text she sends back is thoughtfully constructed; emphatic in a way that is neither pushy or dismissive. She takes care to address her every concern, validate her every fear, before soothing her with words of comfort. She knows, instinctively, that Miles is there too—his condolences are weaved between every line Jen writes. Outside of classes, they spend so much of their time together that messaging one is as good as messaging the other. Sara sometimes wonders if it's an engaged couple thing or just them.

The morning after David's accident, Miles sent her only one message.

‘We're here.'

Somehow, those two words offer as much relief as all of Jen's gentle assurances.

Sara didn't ask him to elaborate; she understood what it meant. Jen is her best friend, but they're more different than alike—a study in opposites. Miles and her? They're cut from the same cloth. Stubborn with their pain; hoarding their trauma to themselves as if sharing it would mean letting it run wild. Jen calls it internalizing. Miles calls it handling his business and avoiding casualties.

Sara thinks it's probably a bit of both, but she just calls it surviving. Right now, with the bruises under eyes and the aches in her limbs—evidence of all the sleep she's missed—she thinks her definition feels the most fitting.

The first thing she notices when she steps out of the car is the smell. Oma's windows are wide open, letting the evening breeze in and the scent of her cooking out. Sara inhales, letting the air rest in her lungs while her stomach gives a hungry lurch. She's missed Oma's cooking fiercely—has ever since she moved away for college—but the past week she's been surviving almost solely off meals from the hospital cafeteria and protein bars. Neither provided anything more than calorie intake and wishes for something that didn't come prepackaged.

Sara slides her phone into the back pocket of her jeans and closes the car door, leaving her keys in the ignition and her purse on the passenger seat. There's no fear of theft when the only neighbors for miles are corn and cattle.

When she opens the front door, she calls out for her grandmother despite knowing where she'll be. Oma answers back, confirming her suspicions, as she slips off her sandals.

"In the kitchen!"

Despite her exhaustion and heartache, Sara's lips tilt into a smile. It's weak and frayed at the edges (the very action makes her realize how unused those muscles in her face have been lately) but it's sincere. "It smells great in here."

Oma's hands are bowl deep in dough, her aged fingers reaching in and plucking a golf ball sized piece and rolling it smooth between her palms. Behind her bifocals, her blue eyes spark with laughter. "Well, I heard my favorite granddaughter would be coming to visit," she winks; a flash of shimmering blue eyeshadow that has always reminded Sara of those tropical butterflies—the ones that live on the edges of wishes and reality. "So I decided to make her favorites."

Sara leans in and kisses her cheek. "Sorry it took so long."

Oma's smile falters, dimming into something more sympathetic than soft. She reaches, crossing the short distance between them, but stops short when she remembers the dough in her hands. "I'm so sorry, sweet girl."

It's like there's a vice around her neck, growing tighter and tighter the longer Oma's words sit between them. If she were to open her mouth, Sara's certain the only thing that would claw its way out is a sob. She bites her lip, focusing on the pain in a poor attempt to distract herself from the tears burning behind her eyes. The only thing she can manage is a jerky nod of acknowledgment.

Oma mimics the motion with far more grace, before she flicks her eyes toward the shallow bowl of cinnamon sugar. "Why don't you roll the cookies for me? My old eyes can hardly see well enough to make sure I get full coverage anymore."

Sara releases a shaky breath, eyes closing briefly to compose herself. Never has she been more thankful for her grandmother's lack of prying. "Sure." The word is ragged and raw—snagging in her throat before she forces it out—but Oma doesn't call her out on it.

There's something therapeutic about rolling the balls of dough until it's evenly coated in cinnamon and sugar. The simple, repetitive motions. Mindless. It feels like the first time in weeks that she's been able to breathe without every worry invading her thoughts. Beside her, Oma hums some old song that Sara recognizes but doesn't know the words to, her hands molding the dough in time with the rhythm.

For the first ten minutes, no words pass between them, and the world seems a little bit calmer for it. Sara feels the coil in her chest loosen, the tension in her shoulders pulling away like a tide and (even though she knows the waters will rise again) she can't help but embrace the reprieve.

Oma hands her another ball of dough, the song she was humming ended. "How are things with Roy?"

She never refers to him as ‘your father'—only by his name. There's years worth of bad blood between them, but Oma has always refrained from pointing out her father's (obvious) flaws. Sara suspects that calling him by his name is her grandmother's way of passive aggressively downplaying the role he has in her life. Her father has never been as considerate, and the older Sara becomes, the more she appreciates her grandmother's discretion.

"The usual," she says, shrugging. There's a tension in her neck she's been unable to stretch out; a hollow ache at the base of her skull she can't escape. She's tried to rub it away for days with no relief, but the temptation to knead at the muscle remains. It's only the dough and sugar sticking to her fingers that stops her now. "He wants me to stay with him for the rest of the summer, but once David's released, he's going home with his parents while he recovers."

Sara winces, heart aching. "And I still need to figure out what to do about the apartment."

The one-bedroom apartment David and her signed for. The one they were supposed to move into next week—together. The one she can't afford on her own.

Oma's hand rests on hers, a comforting weight. The oil from the dough has softened her grandmother's lined palms. "Things will work out, my sweet girl. Everything happens for a reason."

Sara says nothing. Once, maybe, she believed that. Never with the same conviction as her grandmother, but with the same half-hearted hope that one wishes on a shooting star. Now, she struggles to even listen to the words without openly flinching.

A final pat on the back of her hand, and Oma gives her a smile wide enough to almost make her hope. "You'll see."

The plateof cookies feels heavy in Sara's hands as she rides the elevator up; they stare up at her with swirls of cinnamon and chocolate chip eyes. They hadn't stopped baking after the Snickerdoodles. Maybe it was because Oma sensed she needed the distraction, or perhaps she was serious when she accused Sara of "needing more meat on her bones", but they had gone straight to the family Chocolate Chip Cookie recipe as soon as the last batch of cinnamon-sugar cookies made it into the oven.

It's not the first time she's brought David food, but it is the first time it hasn't come from the fast food or grocery store around the corner. Sara wonders if it even matters, or if the batch of cookies will end up in the trash, too.

She sighs. The elevator dings, doors opening to the fourth floor. She pulls her shoulders back, straightens her spine, and masks herself in a confidence she doesn't really feel. The nurses give her pitying smiles as she walks down the hall; Sara can feel the whispers—a prickle at the nape of her neck—the moment she crosses the threshold to Room 432.

David is alone today; the seat his mother usually occupies is empty. He takes one look at her, a fleeting cursory glance, before rolling his eyes. "You again."

Sara swallows down the hurt, knuckles as white as her grandmother's china.

It's not his fault, she reminds herself, he doesn't remember.

Be patient.

"I brought some of Oma's cookies," she offers, setting them on an empty corner of his hospital table. The small shrug she gives is as weak as her smile. "You always liked them more than the ones I made."

"Whatever."

Her teeth sink into her bottom lip, rubbing her arm in a self-conscious effort to have something to do with her hands. "Is... is there anything else I could bring? To make you more comfortable? I know your parents—"

"Look, don't you get it?" he sneers. Sara has never seen his expression look so ugly. "I don't want you here."

Sara stares at his hands, fisted and white-knuckled, in the crisp sheets. She remembers how those same fingers used to lace with hers on the center console with the sun streaming in the windows and the local country station coming in staticky on his old truck speakers. The pain in her chest doubles. "I'm just trying to help." Her voice is small, rough. It feels like she's speaking around gravel.

"Yeah, well, who asked you?" he snaps. "I don't want your pity!"

Her stomach sinks. "It's not—"

David doesn't let her finish, his face is flushed with a rage she doesn't remember. "Just leave me the hell alone!"

His nurse is at her elbow, coaxing her out of the room. Sara barely feels her hands on her shoulders, barely registers her words (come with me now, honey). There's a buzzing in her ears, a numbness in her bones, but she still recognizes the sound of her grandmother's china shattering against the wall.

Oma knowsthe moment she opens the door. Even through the burning of her eyes, Sara can see the way her face falls, the sympathetic drawing of her brow. Her grandmother folds her into her arms, hand stroking over her hair, just as Sara's knees go weak and the first broken sob bursts from her lungs with a violence that leaves her trembling.

"Oh, my dear sweet girl," Oma croons, holding her in the open doorway—moths fluttering around the porch light overhead. Sara sobs harder, the force of it ripping through her chest in a keening howl. Oma holds her, soft shushing sounds emitting from her aged lips, as she rocks her. After a few minutes, she gently guides her to the couch; her arms holding her together the entire way.

She tells Sara stories about the grandfather she never got to meet—how she would help him sow the seeds and tend the stalks until the corn grew taller than he was. She tells of how he'd strip the husk from the first corn harvested, breath it in, give Oma a tobacco stained smile, and say, "Look at that gold, eh Gertie?"

Oma chuckles, deep and raspy. "Oh, he'd say the exact thing every year. Even the bad ones." She sighs. "Sometimes I wonder… if he had let someone else man the farm sooner, if I could've kept him longer." She tilts up her granddaughter's face, arthritic fingers cupping her cheeks and her wizened stare more gray than blue in the lamplight. "And then I remember, how little good wondering does for us."

"But Oma—"

"My dear, sweet Sara." She sweeps some hair from her forehead, fingers whispering over her brow. "Take this time to mourn—your grief, your sadness, it's all deserved. But when the tears run out, pick yourself up. Keep him in your heart, but let him go and move forward."

Sara shakes her head. "It's different, though. David isn't dead, he just—"

Oma's hands grip her shoulders, stern in ways she hasn't been since she was a girl. "Gone. Sara, he's gone."

Fury fills her, hot and aching in her chest; pounding relentlessly in her ears. She pulls away, ignoring her grandmother's level gaze. "How can you say that?! How can you just give up on him?!"

Sara has never yelled at Oma. Never. She expects to see a flash of hurt, maybe even anger, but her grandmother's gaze only holds pity. "Because I love you, and your happiness is more important to me than anything else in this world." She holds Sara's hands in hers, weathered thumbs stroking the backs of her knuckles. "You tried and have nothing but his cruelty to show for it. Helping him shouldn't hurt you."

She wants to argue. She wants to scream.

Sara thinks of her mother's rusty red sedan, of the beer cans and whiskey bottles strewn across the kitchen countertop at home, and has to tramp down the burning urge to remind her grandmother that that's what giving up looks like. Instead, she rips herself from Oma's gentle hands and runs out the door—ignoring the voice calling after her.