When we got home, my parents put Amy and Jackie in the guest bedroom, and Em and I crawled into my bed like we had done so many times when we were kids. Em turned on the flashlight on her phone and made shadow puppets on my ceiling: a dog, a rabbit, a goose. Then she made a face and made its mouth move to say, “I saw you dancing with a strange boy.”
“Sam, remember? You talked to him.”
“I did not remember, admittedly,” the mouth said. “Now I remember. Who is he?”
“One of my aunt’s students, I guess.”
“He seemed nice. Did you get his number?”
“Why would I get his number?”
“So you can call him and go on barfingly cute little hetero dates, obviously,” she said, abandoning the shadow face, letting her hands fall to her sides.
“He lives far away,” I said.
“He lives an hour away.”
“That’s far. That’s basically a long-distance relationship.”
“You once said Jackie and I have a long-distance relationship because our lockers are in different hallways.”
“It just seems like a lot of work.”
“Can I ask you something?” Em turned the flashlight off and put her phone on the pillow. She rolled over toward me. I could see her face in the glow of the moonlight coming through the window. “Why were you hiding in the bathroom?”
“I wasn’t hiding in the bathroom,” I said quickly.
“You were totally hiding in the bathroom. It’s, like, your signature move. Whenever I can’t find you, I look under the stalls for your shoes.”
“I was tired. I didn’t feel like dancing anymore.”
“How come?”
“I don’t know. Leave me alone.”
“You seem a little distant, and maybe that’s dumb to say because I know how sad you’re feeling right now, but I’m also worried that you’re going to pull away, or not talk to me about how sad you are, and you should talk to me about how sad you are, because you can’t keep that kind of thing bottled up, you know?”
“She left me letters,” I said suddenly. It just came out.
“Helen?”
“Yeah. All these letters. Kind of like . . . instructions.”
“Instructions for what?”
“So far just for little things, like—be happy, go to the party, eat a cupcake. Shit, I forgot to eat a cupcake.”
“Helen left you a letter telling you to eat a cupcake?”
“Don’t say it like that.”
“I’m sorry! I didn’t mean it. . . . I’m just processing. That must be so nice.”
“Nice?”
“To have them. It’s like she’s still here with you, you know?”
“Yeah. Yeah, I guess it is nice.”
“Oh! And!”
Em jumped out of bed, surprisingly spry for this late at night, this many white wine colas. She grabbed her overnight bag and fished around in it for a second and then pulled out a wad of napkins. She presented them to me, smiling widely. I carefully peeled back layer after layer until I got to a particularly squashed cupcake.
“You didn’t,” I said.
“I stole it,” she said, shrugging. “But now you can do what she wanted you to do!”
“You’re really amazing, do you know that?”
“I’ve heard.” She climbed back into bed, and I swear she was asleep in three and a half seconds.
I sat down at my desk and ate the cupcake slowly. It was really good, from my aunt’s favorite bakery. She always said it was all about the frosting; the frosting could make or break the cake. When I was done, I wiped my hands with the napkins and then threw them in the trash. And then I found the fourth letter from my aunt and opened it, reading it while Em quietly snored in the bed.
Lottie,
I hope the party was a success. God, I love a good party. I love a bad party too, because then you can steal a little bit to drink and go out on the balcony with a friend and make your own kind of fun.
This next task is less fun but still important, I think.
I want you to go and say good-bye to my house.
Say that out loud (I just did, because I’m dying of cancer and can do whatever I want) and it sounds a little silly.
How does one say good-bye to a house?
But oh, I loved that house. I loved that house with you and your brother. Playing croquet (the silliest game) and making brownies and watching movies. I have secretly loved that my workaholic brother married a workaholic woman because it meant that I got you kids so often, and we really had a chance to just hang out. What I wouldn’t give for another hundred of those hangouts!
But soon it will be someone else’s house, and that’s okay too. It will have a whole new lifetime of things happening inside it.
But a piece of it will always be ours, I think.
Go say good-bye to that piece for me.
Love, H.
I put the letter away. I watched Em toss in her sleep. I tried to imagine a new family moving into Aunt Helen’s house, and a tiny sliver of my brain reared up in angry protest.
But that wasn’t right. Because the alternative was worse. The house staying empty forever—that didn’t make any sense at all. I thought of Margo wandering around her house after her parents disappeared, and my heart broke for her and for me and for the losses we’d had to endure.
I wasn’t tired at all. I crept quietly across the room to take Alvin Hatter and the Return of the Overcoat Man off its shelf. I opened it to a random page and began to read.
Em was gone when I woke up. She always got up at the crack of dawn to go running, no matter how late she’d been up the night before. She was the golden child of our high school track team and was going to college on an almost full scholarship. I’d never seen anyone run as fast as Em. She said it was because there were a lot of closed-minded people in the world she needed to get away from.
My parents and Abe were already up, and when I told them I was going to go over to Aunt Helen’s, they asked if they could come with me. I’d forgotten about the other task Harry had given us, the uncomfortable prospect of pawing through my aunt’s things, but it was nice to know that I didn’t have to be alone.
The four of us got into the car and drove over to her house. I felt a tight ball of nerves growing inside me.
When Aunt Helen and I were in the car together we always counted cars, blues against reds, to see who would find the most of their color first. I found myself counting blue cars now, trying to remember if breast cancer was genetic or random. I couldn’t recall what any of my grandparents had died from; it had all been when Abe and I were little. We weren’t allowed to go to the funerals, and I don’t think anybody even really explained what death meant. I wish I’d never had to find out.
Next to me, Abe played some game on his phone. The screen was a mess of different-colored dots. I had watched him play that game for months, and I still didn’t understand what the point was.
“Are you happy about getting her books?” I asked him, trying to stop the downward spiral of my brain.
“Are you kidding? Of course I’m happy. She probably has thousands of books.”
“I don’t know where you’re going to put them all.”
“Guest bedroom,” he said immediately. Clearly he’d already thought about it. “All those built-in bookcases just collecting dust. Maybe I’ll move into it, switch rooms. Maybe I’ll take it as my second bedroom. You know she has first editions of every single Roald Dahl book, right? I can’t wait to . . .” He blushed, turned away from me, and cleared his throat.
“Were you about to say smell them?” I said.