Chapter 1 - The Quiet Bedroom
The light was wrong before I understood anything else. It came in too bright through the sliding doors, across the dark wood floor in long clean lines, and caught on the sheer curtains so they glowed. Grandma Rose was lying in the middle of that light in her light pajamas with the burgundy trim, and she wasn't moving the way she always moved in the morning. She always turned her head first and squinted at me and said my hair was a mess. That morning she just lay there under the light bedding with her hands folded, and the room kept being too still around her.
I had my cheek pressed to the mattress beside her. I could feel the blanket rough under my skin and smell the laundry soap from it. I kept watching her chest to catch it lifting. It did, I thought it did, just barely, but then I couldn't tell if I was making it happen by holding my own breath. Mom stood all the way by the glass doors with her hands up near her face and didn't tell me to get up.
My name is Lily. I was eleven that morning, and I didn't get out of bedside.
It was Saturday and the house was quiet in a way Saturday never was. Dad's truck wasn't running in the driveway. The hallway outside the dark wooden door wasn't creaking with anybody getting ready. The clock on Mom's side said 8:14, and that felt late because Grandma Rose always woke up before seven and put on her slippers and asked me if I wanted toast cut in triangles.
I stayed with my head on the bed and counted her breaths the way we'd counted fireflies on the balcony last summer. One. Then a long space. Then maybe another one. The upholstered armchair in the corner was empty with her folded blanket on it where she'd left it the night before. Her glasses were on the nightstand. I stared at those glasses and waited for her hand to reach for them. Her hand stayed on top of the bedding, pale and curled, and didn't reach.
Mom hadn't moved from the doors. Her long dark hair hung over her beige blouse and her gold necklaces caught the light every time she breathed hard. Her dark pants brushed the floor when she shifted her weight, just once. She kept staring at the bed like if she looked hard enough Rose would sit up. I wanted her to come over and check and say something normal, but she just kept her hands pressed near her mouth.
The floor creaked out in the hall.
I lifted my head a little. Mom's head snapped toward the dark wooden door. Dad was standing there in his dark blue button shirt with his hair still messed from sleep and stubble on his chin. He stopped dead in the doorway with his eyes wide and his mouth half open, like he'd walked in on something he wasn't ready to see. He looked at Rose first, then at me with my cheek still against the blanket, then at Mom by the glass doors.
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Nobody said anything. The curtains moved a little from the vent and the light shifted on Dad's face. He took one hard breath through his nose. I could hear it from the bed. He stepped forward into the room and the wood popped under his shoe, loud in the quiet. Mom turned fully toward him, her hands dropping an inch from her face.
Then someone knocked downstairs.
