“Eva. I told you I thought of some things that might make her feel more at home.”
“And that thing is . . . a necklace.”
She shrugs, her eyes never leaving her task. “You’d be surprised what makes you feel loved when you lose the person you love the most.”
I blink. Over and over again, hoping the scene will change, but it never does. When I don’t move or say anything else, she looks up.
“Ugh. Baby, don’t look at me like that.” She returns her gaze to her noble task. “Can you help me, please?”
I keep staring at her, her too-big tank top hanging off her shoulders, her long fingers growing more and more steady as she works. She always gets better, more confident, the longer she sticks with something, her chronic creative paralysis fading with each motion. I know this about her.
It makes me wonder—?what does she know about me? What would she say if someone asked her my favorite food or what scares me or about a sure way to get me to laugh? Would she have an answer at all?
“Gracie?” she says when I don’t answer. “A little help?”
Closing my eyes, I inhale through my nose and let it out slowly, something Emmy taught me to do a few years ago when I’d get stressed about piano recitals. When I feel a little less violent, I open my eyes and find Jay standing in the doorway to the kitchen. He flicks his eyes from me to my mom to the necklace and back to me. He looks concerned, and I wonder how long he’s been standing there and how much he overheard.
The violence floods back in, but it’s a childlike kind of violence. The kind that wants to stomp my feet and bury my face in my mother’s skirt and ask her—?beg her—?to see me.
But I can’t ask her to do that.
Because if I do, she’ll tilt her head at me and smile, maybe even cup my face in her hands and kiss my forehead.
I do see you, baby.
And that answer is almost worse than nothing at all.
“I have to go to work,” I say flatly.
Mom doesn’t say goodbye as I walk out the door.
Jay stops me when I’m halfway down the driveway. I don’t hear his feet eating at the gravel until he’s right next to me, hooking a hand on my arm and swinging me around. I jerk away from him, nearly losing my grip on my bike, and keep walking, pushing it along next to me.
“Grace.”
“I have to go to work, Jay. Shouldn’t you be asleep or playing Mario Kart or jerking off or something?”
“Nice. And I have work too, you know.”
“No, I don’t. And I don’t care.”
“Jesus, I’m just trying to check on you. Your mom—?”
“What, run out of flirty material to try out on her?”
“You’re impossible.”
I stop, turning to glare at him, my fingers white on my bike handles. His hair is all mussed and his eyes have turned soft. I remember how he used to whisper my name, over and over, while he kissed my eyes, my nose, my ears, my mouth.
Grace. Kiss. Gracie. Kiss.
What a load of shit.
“I’ll be impossible if I want to,” I say. “And you don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.”
His gaze turns hard. “And whose fault is that, huh? But I do know your mom’s a bitch who needs to grow up.”
I shove him. Hard, in the chest with both hands. His eyes pop in surprise, and he stumbles back a few steps. Early-morning sunlight spills over his hair, turning it into gold. I shove him again.
