Karen nods as she looks down at her fingers, still working them open and closed around the mostly shredded tissue.
“He’s going to blame me, you know. Like if I wasn’t such a hateable hardass, Cassie would still be—” Karen clamps her hand over her mouth when her voice cuts out. “And he’ll be right. That’s the worst part. Vince has problems, but he and Cassie—” She shakes her head. “They always connected. Maybe if I—”
“Nothing is that simple. Not with kids, not with anything,” my dad says as he finally finds his keys in a drawer. “Come on, let’s stop back at your place first. Make sure there’s no sign of Cassie there. We’ll call Vince on the way. I’ll even talk to him if you want.” My dad steps toward the front door but pauses when he notices Karen’s feet. “Oh, wait, your shoes.”
“That’s okay,” she says with an embarrassed wave of her hand. Even now, trying to reclaim a small scrap of perfect. “I’ll be fine. I drove here this ridiculous way. I can get back home.”
“What if we end up having to stop someplace else? No, no, you need shoes. You can borrow a pair of Hope’s.”
Hope’s? So casually, too, like he didn’t just offer Karen a sheet of my skin. Of course, it’s not like he can offer Karen a pair of my spare shoes. After a panic-fueled anti-hoarder’s episode after the funeral, I only have one pair of shoes left. The ones I’m wearing. But it’s the way my dad said it: like it would be nothing to give away all my mom’s things.
Sometimes I wonder if my dad had stopped loving my mom even before she died. I have evidence to support this theory: their fight, namely. After an entire life of basically never a mean word between them, they had suddenly been at each other constantly in the weeks before the accident. And not really loving her would definitely explain why he hasn’t seemed as broken up as me in the days since she died.
Don’t do it, I think as he moves toward the steps for her shoes. I will never forgive you if you do. Luckily, he stops when his phone buzzes in his hand.
He looks down at it. “I’m sorry, but this is Dr. Simons.” Saved by my dad’s only friend: Dr. Simons. The one person he will always drop everything for. That never bothered me before. But right now, it is seriously pissing me off. “Can you take Karen upstairs, Wylie? See if there’s something of your mom’s that will fit her?”
I just glare at him.
“Are you okay?” he asks, when I still don’t move. His face is tight.
“Yeah,” I say finally, because he’ll probably use me being angry as more proof that we shouldn’t be helping Karen. “I’m awesome.”
But the whole way upstairs, I still try to think of an excuse not to give Karen the shoes. One that doesn’t seem crazy. One that my mom would approve of. Because my mom would want me to give Karen whatever she needs. You can do it, she’d say if she was there. I know you can.
Soon enough, Karen is behind me in my parents’ room as I stand frozen in front of their closet. We’re only lending them, I remind myself, as I pull open the closet door and crouch down in front of my mom’s side of the closet. I close my eyes and try not to take in her smell as I feel around blindly for her shoes. Finally, my hands land on what I think are a pair of low dress boots that my mom only wore once or twice. But I feel sick when I open my eyes and see what I’ve pulled out instead. My mom’s old Doc Martens, the ones she loved so much she had the heels replaced twice.
“I know Cassie misses you,” Karen says while I’m still bent over my mom’s Doc Martens like an animal protecting its last meal. “Because I still know how she really feels. Even if she thinks I don’t. And I know that right now, Cassie’s totally lost and what she really needs is a good friend. A friend like you.”
Karen comes over and kneels next to me. I feel her look from me to the boots and back again. Then she leans forward and reaches into the closet herself. A second later, she pulls out a pair of bright-white, brand-new tennis shoes. The ones that my grandmother—my dad’s mom—gave to my mom years ago, probably because my mom always hated tennis.
“What about these instead?” Karen asks.
Yes, I would say if I wasn’t so afraid my voice would crack. Those would be much, much better.
“Do you think Cassie at least knows how much I love her?” Karen asks, rocking back to sitting, her eyes still on the sneakers. “Because things haven’t been easy between us lately. Let’s face it, they’ve never been easy. And I know I’ve made a lot of mistakes. I could have done so many things, so much better. But I was always trying. And I really do love her. She knows that, right?”
Cassie has said so many awful things about her mom—selfish, self-involved, fat-shaming, judgmental, superficial. But the thing that Cassie said most often was that she didn’t think Karen loved her. Not in the way a mom should.