I reach for Nan’s hand; it’s still warm, but limp in mine. I keep waiting for her to wake up, to open her eyes and wave me off with a curse about how no one should be fussing about her. But she doesn’t. She can’t. Because she’s gone.
Annette has died.
The days following Nan’s passing are a blur—or rather, a river of mourning that knocks me off my feet any chance it gets. Nan was the closest thing I had left for family, and without her I’m empty, hollow and frozen, with nothing left to do and nothing to tether me in place.
The anger I felt towards Noah built and crested the morning after everything happened, but has since been buried under a mountain of heartbreak. Nan is gone, and so is her diner, and Noah doesn’t deserve the grief.
My initial email to Spencer was brief—three lines explaining I would be taking the week off to grieve and plan the funeral. This morning, three days after my world fell apart, I’m sitting in front of my laptop and a plate of cold toast I haven’t touched. Kara walks in and settles in across from me.
“Do you want some help?”
I shiver out of the numb, silent place I’ve been retreating to and shake my head. My eyes are dry, my eyelids more like sandpaper after all the tears.
“No. I need to do this.”
My email is open again, a drafted resignation letter staring back at me. I haven’t sent it yet—not because I don’t want to, but because it feels like ending things for good between me and Noah. I’m sure he’s called. My phone has been off since Saturday and I’m still working on the courage to turn it on.
Kara moves to get up and I blink.
“Wait.”
Sliding my lifeless phone over to her I look up, my lip already trembling.
“I need you to turn it on, clear out the messages and voicemails from Noah, and then block his number. My passcode is five, five, four, seven, three, one.”
A confused frown passes over her face and she opens her mouth, probably to ask me what on earth is happening, but thankfully thinks better of it.
“Okay.”
She takes my phone and leaves, turning the corner towards the living room. Taking a deep breath through my nose I sit up a little taller and review the note to Spencer. It’s polite but right to the point:
Due to a personal tragedy, I am submitting my resignation effective immediately. I offer my passwords to the various locked accounts I’ve worked on and mention that if there are any issues, I will be available for a single phone call sometime after the funeral.
I know he won’t take me up on it, but given my sudden exit, it feels like the right thing to offer. Channeling the anger from Noah’s betrayal, I hit send, my breath rushing out with the quietswishof the email disappearing.
Kara steps back into the kitchen and sets my phone down next to me. The screen is on, a picture of me and Nan staring up. A new wave of pain threatens to burst, and Kara sinks down next to me with her arms pulled tight around my middle.
“I’m so sorry, Lottie. So, so sorry.”
I lean over onto her shoulder, letting the tears flow again. Kara’s been a near constant, even going as far as to sleep in my bed with me—curling her arms around me when I wake crying in the night. I’ve been a shell, but she manages to get me to wake, eat and sleep on a somewhat regular schedule.
“We don’t have to go today,” she murmurs, her hand reaching up to smooth my hair.
I sit up, wiping the back of my hand across my eyes. “Yes. We do.”
It’s not an easy thing, cleaning up someone’s life after they are gone, though Nan moving into the new place certainly made things simpler. She’d already cleared out as much of her life as possible—paring it down to fit into her new one bedroom apartment instead of the house where she’d spent most of her adult life.
Today, though, we are meeting Henrietta at what would have been Nan’s new place to sort through some of her personal belongings, deciding what I’ll keep and what can be donated or thrown away.
Once more, the finality of the act is keeping me frozen in place.
I’m kneeling on the floor of what would have been Nan’s room. The soft, age-worn quilt she used for as long as I’ve known her—as long as I knew her—is still tucked around her mattress. The four boxes of picture frames are stacked by the door, the memory of my mocking them with Noah still haunting me in more ways than one.
The contents of her dresser are spread out around me and I run my finger over one of her favorite sweaters, a lilac cashmere. The knot in my throat, the one that’s been there since the hospital, bobs as I swallow hard and place it in the keep pile.
“Lottie?” Kara is standing in the doorway. “There’s someone here for you. A lawyer.”
Pushing up from the floor, I cross into the living room to find Henrietta making small talk with a middle aged man in a gray suit.
