Page 48

“Breathe,” Shira said, and it was only then Leo realized he hadn’t in what was probably too long a time. He sucked in a big gulp of air and immediately got light-headed. “One step at a time. You don’t have to worry about any of it yet. Just get through today.”

Today. Right. The funeral. He still felt faint. They were going to bury his dad in the ground. According to Jewish tradition, which meant no embalming and no wake, just a plain pine box and the ground.

Leo would never see his dad again. He’d always thought of wakes as kind of creepy—both his grandparents on his mom’s side, along with his grandpa’s second wife, had had one, and their waxy faces and unnaturally posed hands had made him want to run away. But it was technically one last time to see them. His dad was gone forever.

Eventually, probably, that thought would break through and stick and stop hitting him so hard every single time.

“Have you eaten anything lately?” she asked him, and he realized he hadn’t at the exact same time his stomach growled so loudly Neptune jumped away, ears pricked, as if some beagle-eating monster were approaching. Shira snorted. “Okay, there’s my answer. I’ve got some time before I have to go get the sandwiches. Let me fix you something.”

“You don’t have to,” Leo said, but she was already opening cabinets and grimacing at whatever was inside the fridge.

“Of course I don’t have to. I want to.” She shook her head. “My god, your dad really has the most stereotypical old-bachelor cupboards. He’s got olives, boxed mac and cheese, sprouting onions, and several bottles of hard alcohol.”

“He wasn’t supposed to be drinking after his first heart attack,” Leo said, a flash of anger lighting in his chest. Maybe this second heart attack was his dad’s fault.

Maybe he could be furious instead of sad. That seemed like a small improvement.

But Shira was already shaking her head. “They’re pretty dusty, see?” she said, showing him the bottle of vodka, which actually looked like the exact same bottle Leo used to take the occasional hit from back in his warehouse days. Her fingers, closed around the neck of the bottle, showcased unbitten nails. Her stress levels must have lowered over the past year. “Oh, we have some canned soup here. I could go all Chopped. What do you think about fried mac-and-cheese arancini with a velvety cream-of-mushroom-soup sauce and an olive-onion crumble?”

His mouth actually watered. “Not bad.”

She laughed. “Well, I’m not making that. Sorry.” She pulled out one of the boxes of mac and cheese, flipping it over to read the expiration date. It apparently met her satisfaction, because she didn’t grimace at it, just put it on the counter. “Though it was always fun when we used to play Chopped. Right? Remember that time you gave me a basket of black licorice, hard-boiled eggs, blueberries, and bologna?”

His turn to grimace. “I set you up to fail with that one.”

“Yeah,” she said, reaching to the rack above the stove for a pot. She was too short to reach the small one; without asking, Leo stood and snagged it for her, then set it gently on the stovetop. “I didn’t have to make hot licorice deviled eggs with a blueberry-bologna sauce, though.”

He stuck out his tongue, pretending to gag. “I’m pretty sure my dad actually puked.”

“And not even from eating it, remember?” she said. “It was just from the smell.”

His laugh was genuine, and it felt good, though he sobered quickly when he remembered the whole reason they were here. Shira didn’t seem to notice, or if she did, she didn’t let on, only put water on to boil. “And he wasn’t happy when we used his frozen crab legs for another Chopped round,” she said. “Remember, he’d been saving them for some special occasion? Maybe for when he got a promotion. But we thawed them, and then we couldn’t even break them open for the meat, so we just used them as swords.”

“Not swords,” he said, remembering. “We were monsters, I think. They were our claws.”

“But it turned out that the licorice eggs were poison and burned out our esophagi before we could finish the battle.”

“Unfortunate,” he said, the memory tickling his brain, how he and Shira had writhed around on the grass, gagging and clawing at their throats. “It was lucky they grew back in time for us to have lunch.”

“Very lucky,” she said. The sound of falling rain as she poured the box of macaroni into the boiling water. “Set a timer for six minutes.”

He set a timer for six minutes. It ticked away as she rooted around for milk in the fridge, then wrinkled her nose at the smell of the open jug and pulled out a stick of butter. “I’ll add extra butter. It’ll still be good.”

“Extra butter is always better,” he said. “What was it your mom used to say? There’s no such thing as too much butter?”

“Until you ate an entire stick plain on a dare.”

“Oh man, I almost forgot about that.” Something about bringing back these old memories was making him breathe a little easier, helping him remember that there was a world out there beyond what was happening right now. “I don’t think my intestines knew what to do with it. I might as well have eaten a sock.”

“Please, keep the rest to yourself.” Shira dumped the pasta into a strainer. The water swirled down the drain while the steam rose to cloud around her hair. “Okay, one more minute.” She added the butter to the pan, let it swirl around until it melted, then added water and cheese powder. “Mmm, orange.” She stirred it with the one wooden spoon his dad owned, then dumped in the pasta and stirred again. It made a squelching sound that could’ve either come from a horror movie or a sex scene. “Okay, get a plate.”

It was easy to listen, so he did. Well, mostly. He got two, holding one out in each hand. She glanced over her shoulder at him, wielding the wooden spoon before her like a wand. “Is Emily coming?”

He’d almost forgotten about Emily. Which was understandable, he told himself, given that his head was full with thoughts of his dad and how he was going to survive the day. “I got the other plate for you.” He immediately felt silly standing there holding the empty plate. “If you want some. If not, no worries.”

She blinked at him, then smiled. A spark of something lit in his belly—not happiness, exactly, but the thought that the feeling might eventually exist in him again. “You know what, sure. Why not.” She slopped a few big spoonfuls of mac and cheese onto each plate with more horrible squelching noises, then gestured at the table. “I know we used to eat on the floor, but I’m old now.”

“I’m old, too,” protested Leo.