She called me. “Oh my God, I’m so sorry,” she said.
I couldn’t speak. I sniffled as tears poured down my cheeks.
“What do you need? Anything. I’m your girl.”
“I don’t know,” I managed, my voice cracking. “I just want her back.”
“Oh, honey. You just… You just do what you need to do there. Leave everything up here to me.”
I don’t know how she managed to get into my room, but she packed my meager belongings from the college and brought everything down the next day. When I saw the things Grant gave me, my first instinct was to burn them in a bonfire. But I caught myself. Sadie said the bag alone was worth seventy thousand dollars. If the other stuff could also fetch that kind of money, it’d help pay the sky-high hospital bills.Even when they can’t save your loved ones, they want your money,I think bitterly. I don’t want to burden Grandpa with that when he just lost the love of his life.
“I want to sell these,” I told Suyen, laying out the items.
“No problem. I’ll take care of it,” she said.
“Thank you.”
Her mom also came from San Jose. She gave me a tight hug and cooked for us. “You poor child. You leave everything to me and Suyen, okay?”
I nodded. “Thank you.”
She tsked and dabbed a Kleenex on my cheeks.
Everything passed by in a blur, filtered through a thick layer of grief. “Am I ever going to be okay?” I whispered before sipping the hot jasmine tea Suyen’s mom made.
“You will.” She squeezed my hand.
“How am I going to know? When does it happen?”
“When I lost my father…” she began gingerly, and I realized I too had lost my parents, except I’d been too young to understand what that meant. “I was devastated. Just so sad. Cried for days. But then…one day, I wasn’t sad. Just numb. And then…one day, I wasn’t even numb anymore. The living go on living.”
I looked at Grandpa, who shed endless tears while staring at nothing.
Is he ever going to just…get over it?
Can any of us really reach that stage? It doesn’t seem possible.
On the day we bury Grandma, Suyen, her mom and everyone who loved Grandma come. Grandpa sits silently next to me, his eyes red. I stand on the sunny green cemetery field in my black suit and stare at the coffin in the hole in the ground. I’m thankful that at least she isn’t in the cheapest casket. Guess my time with Grant was good for something.
Shame threatens to overwhelm me at the thought of him, but I squash it. I’m not going to feel ashamed for somebody’s else’s wrongdoing. Grandma wouldn’t want that.
Tears burn in my eyes, and I reach over and clasp Grandpa’s hand. I have to be strong for him because now…there are just the two of us left.
I’m not just consigning my grandmother to the earth today. I’m scooping up all the pieces of my own broken heart and putting them into that wretched hole as well. Burying them so deep that they will never have the power to hurt me again.
Part 2: The Present
Chapter Twenty-Five
Aspen
I open the envelope with a sense of dread, and sure enough, it’s another spirit-crushing bill from the Orange Care Center.Four thousand and change.My bank account says I don’t have enough to cover it right now. Not if I want to pay the rent on my ratty studio apartment and have something other than water and stale discounted bread at the end of the day.
Three jobs, and I still can’t make enough money. I suppose I should count myself lucky there’s no credit card debt. That would’ve pushed me into bankruptcy, and then how would I take care of Grandpa?
There is the option of putting him into a cheaper nursing home, but I don’t want to do that. We tried a few, and the Orange Care Center was the clear winner. The staff there treat him with kindness and respect, even when he continues to lose more of himself with every passing week.
Maybe I should talk to Jenna and ask for more hours, especially on weekends. They’re the most lucrative. I’ll also offer to work holidays. It isn’t like I have anything better to do.
