“Why?” Jillian asked.
Because my self-esteem is shattered? Because I’m not ready to trust someone yet? Because my heart is about to be broken in a way I’ve never known, and there isn’t room for more?
“He just did a number on me, is all.”
Grandma watched me as I sat down with my coffee.
“Holly, did I ever tell you about my first husband?” Grandma asked.
I paused, mug midway to my mouth. “You had a first husband?”
“Before your grandfather. Never had any children with him. We were married only eight months before he died. Lucy, remember Chip?”
“What?” Lucy shouted.
“Chip! Do you remember Chip?”
Lucy grimaced. “He was a bastard.”
“Handsome as a fox but mean as a snake,” Grandma said. “I’ve been wanting to tell you about him, I keep forgetting.”
“Why did I never know this?” I asked.
“I don’t like to talk about him,” Grandma said. “I don’t think I breathed his name once during the fifty years I was married to your grandfather. Only started thinking about him recently. We’ll talk about it later.”
Mom stood in the doorway. “Holly, you can’t let what Jeb did get to you. The cheating says so much more about him than you. And what kind of a man steals a neti pot?”
“One that should have his dick in a guillotine,” Jillian said.
“A what?” Lucy asked.
“A DICK GUILLOTINE,” my sister repeated. “A tiny one.”
Mom laughed before turning back to the kitchen. “Lucy, we’re leaving in thirty minutes.”
Jillian nudged our great-aunt with her elbow. “Leaving in thirty minutes,” she shouted. She did a side bend. “I’m leaving in a bit too. I’m taking the kids to the beach.”
Her kids were guinea pigs.
She put them in a mesh tent and took them on outings.
My sister volunteered at three different animal rescues, where she was known as “the guinea pig girl” because she loved to foster them. For work she sold homemade skin-care products at farmers markets. They were really good, I loved her lavender lip scrub.
Jillian, Mom, and Lucy left. I was glad there was going to be a break in the visitors.
Grandma was lying to me.
She was in pain. She just didn’t want to take anything that would make her sleepy or fog her memory when people were here. She wanted to be present, so she wouldn’t accept anything that would actually take the edge off.
A night nurse came every day at 8:00 p.m. so I could go home to sleep. The night nurses told me that she’d ask for morphine the second I’d left.
The sand was running out of the hourglass. And she didn’t want to waste a single grain of it.
Grandma didn’t feel like a person with only a few grains left. I think that’s why this was so hard.
When Grandpa died, he was tired. His dementia had taken a lot of him. We lost him months before we lost his body too. But Grandma still had so much vitality. She didn’t feel ready to go yet.
I wasn’t ready for her to go either.
John
CHAPTER 4
When I opened the apartment door, the smell hit me. “Hello? Maintenance.”
No answer.
I groaned internally.
I’d been the on-site maintenance man for this building for two months. I’d been happy to get the job. Ecstatic. Brenda and I had broken up four months earlier, and I needed a new place. They gave me a fully remodeled unit, I lived there for free, and the pay was great. Driving in LA is a nightmare, and now I didn’t have to. I worked where I lived, all the stars aligned, and I moved in.
Every day since had been like a horror show.
I’d found a body on my second day.
An elderly man had died in his tub, and the tenants below him called because there was brown water leaking from the ceiling. I thought I was going to fix a broken pipe, and instead I was calling a coroner.
The building had a hundred units, no vacancies. It was fifty years old and showing its age. I could see why they wanted an on-site person, because a lot of the repairs were backlogged. Some people had been waiting for months, so they were already pissed off when I got there.
Traveling across town to help Frank every few days with his new condo was starting to feel like a vacation. At least they were happy to see me.
I was going back today after work to help him install a new sink in the second bathroom. By help, I mean I was going to be doing it by myself, and my brother was going to be taking me out to eat Mexican food when I was done. His dishwasher got delivered, and I’d gone over to install that yesterday. When I’d pulled up, the white Honda was there.
The tire was still low. Worse than the day before.
She’d said she was single in the note she left. Maybe she was an older lady? I’d noticed a walker folded up in the back seat yesterday. Maybe she didn’t have any help, didn’t know how to put air in a tire? The car had to have sensors. It was a new model, she had to know it was leaking.
I should have left a note.
I told myself I’d look for the car when I got there later to see if the tire had been fixed yet. It was bugging me. But for now, I had to deal with my real job.
This morning, someone called to tell me there was a bad smell coming from the apartment across from theirs. The tenant wasn’t answering calls, and their rent was overdue.
I was pretty sure it was going to be another body, especially when I opened the door and the stink rolled out.
“Hello?” I called again, breathing into my elbow. It echoed off the walls.
I flicked on the light. The unit was empty. At least what I could see of it from the door. A little bit of trash, but no furniture.
I let myself in and started looking around. It took me about five seconds to figure out what the problem was. The smell was coming from the fridge. It was unplugged and everything in it was rotten. I gagged on the stench I released, opening it. I’d have to tape it shut and take it to the dump. I was unlocking the sliding glass door to air out the room when I heard the noise from the bedroom. A low whimpering.
I poked my head in the door.
There, in the middle of the floor in a wire crate, was a dog.
Four hours later, I sat on my sofa, elbows on my knees, looking at the puppy while he chewed on a rolled-up, frozen rag I’d made him, stuffed with beef jerky.
He was a Lab mix. Black with a white spot on his chest, floppy ears, maybe six months old, tops. He’d been caked in poop, with urine burns on his paws. It took me a solid hour to scrub him clean, but once I did, besides being hungry and thirsty, he was in good shape.
What the hell was wrong with people? Who could do something like that, abandon a living creature to die? I filed a police report, but I doubted anything would come of it.
And now I had a dog.
I’d always wanted one, but Brenda hated animals.
I scoffed internally.
We’d dated for three years. We’d been house hunting, talking about marriage, looking at rings. Then out of nowhere, she announced she was moving to Japan.
It wasn’t entirely out of left field. She spoke the language and had family there. She’d been offered a teaching job. She wanted to go, she felt it was a once-in-a-lifetime experience that she couldn’t pass up. I was willing to go with her. That’s what you do, right? When you find love, you follow it.
Except she wanted to go alone.
Found out later that she’d met someone online and she was moving there to be with him.
At the time I’d been devastated. I couldn’t even get out of bed. Frank helped me move. Let me stay with him until I got the place and job I had now.
There was a time when I thought I would never get over it. But after a few months of thinking about it, I kept coming back to the same thing.
Who doesn’t like dogs?