“I’m sorry,” she says. “I didn’t mean to pry. I just really want to know how you handled it. I can’t imagine. Finding my grandpa was bad enough. I mean, if my boyfriend died, and I found him...” Ava stops, her face frozen.
“I hope you never do.”
“My grandfather never loved me,” Ava says. “My whole family really. They say they love me, but only if I act a certain way.”
“Any way but yourself?”
She nods.
“Story of my life, sweetheart.” I take a sip of water and sit further up in bed. I rub my eyes, my temples. When I look up, there are many floating Avas, many floating ravens.
“Does your grandmother ever talk about me?” I suddenly ask. “Be honest.”
“She does.”
“Really?”
“At the holidays when she’s making your mother’s stuffing, or Christmas cookies. She says, ‘Teddy always made it better than Mama.’”
“Were you ever curious about me?”
“Who do you think really convinced her to come out here?”
I do a double take.
“Really?”
“I couldn’t deal with her anymore. Something’s going on with her, something bigger than Grandpa’s death.”
Thereissomething going on. I knew it.
Ava continues. “It was winter break, and I wanted to get out of that house. It was creepy to be there. And she was driving me nuts. You know her. She can be a sanctimonious beyatch.”
I raise a brow and then laugh, hard, which turns into a long, painful cough.
I reach for my water. It’s empty.
Ava grabs the glass and gets up to refill it. When my coughing eases, I finish it in one big gulp.
“Hungover, and it’s not even dinnertime,” I say, eyeing her closely. “Why are you being so nice? I had you pegged for a bitch.”
“Back at’cha,” Ava says, shooting her finger at me as if it were a pistol. “Birds of a feather. That’s a Billie Eilish song. Barry told me about what you said to that waiter about Chappell Roan. So cringe!”
My chin rises to turn my mouth into a half-moon smile. “Cringe. I like that. Teach me more pop music and cultural slang,” I say. “I’m trying my damnedest to stay young.”
“But not alive?”
Ava nods at my nightstand.
The pamphlets and notes from my doctor are jutting frombeneath a stack of books and magazines. I thought I’d hidden them well.
“Snoop much?” I ask.
“I have eyes like a hawk,” she says proudly. She looks toward the bathroom. “You have Aleve, Advil and Lexapro, but no other meds for your cancer. Why do you want to die?”
“Why do you want to live?”
She shrugs, stands and moves over to sit on the edge of my bed. The raven watches her closely.
