Stairs.
More damn stairs.
I sit on my ass and go down like a toddler because it’s easier and faster, and as I reach the first floor, I hear voices.
No, just one voice.
Ziggy’s voice.
I swing myself into the kitchen.
It’s empty, but her voice is louder. “There’s something I need to tell you.”
The door to the porch is cracked. I angle closer, looking for her companion, and realize she doesn’t have one. She’s sitting in one of the chairs at the iron bistro table under the ceiling fan, talking on the phone.
Jessica’s not on the porch.
Hell-beast is probably under it.
“Abby Nora and I broke up,” Ziggy says.
And everything stops.
For me, anyway.
It’s the tone of her voice.
The sadness. The regret.
The grief.
Shiiiiiiiitttt.
I’m not the only person in this house who’s lost someone, it seems.
And fuck me if that doesn’t make me want to help her even more.
15
Ziggy
I am such a chicken.
I woke up to a text from Mom asking if I wanted to go with her to deliver a present to Abby Nora. That’s when I should’ve asked her to meet me somewhere for breakfast so we could talk.
Instead, I’ve spent the past two hours making myself food, doing the dishes, letting the plumber in, scrubbing the kitchen, dusting and vacuuming the living room, taking care of Jessica, sketching out a menu plan for the next week, and starting a grocery list.
But I couldn’t delay it anymore when Mom called as I was straightening the covered porch.
I could for a while.
I distracted her by asking how the dogs were, if she’d seen Miranda recently, if she and Dad went to this sports charity auction thing I read about, but now she’s forcing my hand.
“Did you see my text?” she says. “I have a baby gift for Abby Nora and I thought you’d like to go with me when I take it over.”
So now here I am, doing this the cowardly way.
Over the phone so I won’t have to look at her and see the disappointment and confusion in her face while all of the best curse words I know in both Italian and Spanish roll through my head.
