Wish You Were Gone(57)
“Fine. Then where would you like to go?” Lizzie asked.
Willow looked around, hands in the pockets of her long cardigan sweater. She splayed them out at her sides, like wings, bringing to mind a vampire bat. “Um, home? Why are we even at the mall?”
“I told you. You need something to wear to James Walsh’s memorial.” Lizzie kept walking, only now realizing that half the stores in the mall had turned over since the last time she was here. Yankee Candle Company was not going to help her. Nor was Teva. Or the Christmas Shoppe. Where were all the clothing stores?
“I have plenty of black clothes, in case you hadn’t noticed,” Willow said, trudging along next to her mother. A couple of girls walking by looked Willow up and down and she actually snarled at them. “Besides, I thought we weren’t spending money right now,” she said, adding air quotes for maximum sarcasm.
Lizzie paused in front of a shop that appeared to sell only wind chimes and dream catchers. Her nerves were frayed and she had the same sense of impending doom she’d carried with her back when she was commuting into the city and that random sniper was on the loose, causing terror up and down the eastern seaboard. She vividly remembered standing at the bus stop near her parents’ home and fully believing that if the number 108 didn’t come around the corner in the next five minutes, she was going to be shot in the head.
Everything could implode at any moment. That was her ultimate takeaway from James Walsh’s death. What if she lost Willow? What if she lost Emma? What if she lost their house? The closer they got to the memorial, the more she felt as if they were all sitting on a runaway train and she was the only one who realized it, and she didn’t have the power to pull the emergency brake. There was nothing she could do to stop the inevitable devastation. The only choice was to wait it out and hope for an epiphany that would save them all.
Lizzie took a deep breath. Be the change. Be the change. Be the change. Someone touched a wind chime and it made a beautiful trilling melody. It felt like a sign. She needed to calm the hell down. Before long, she would have her answers. One way or another, she’d be able to move forward.
“Mom?”
Lizzie looked her daughter in the eye. “Some things are worth spending money on. And yes, I know you have plenty of black clothes, but you can’t wear ripped jeans and an over-washed sweatshirt to a memorial service. You need to show some respect.”
Willow tipped her head back and groaned toward the skylights two stories above her head. “I could have just come here myself, you know.”
Lizzie gave her daughter a pointed look.
“Oh, what? Now you don’t trust me around stores?” Willow demanded.
“Go three months straight without being delivered to my home by a police officer, and we’ll talk trust.”
“Fine,” Willow snapped. “Let’s go to Forever Twenty-One.”
“Thank you.” Lizzie kissed her daughter on the forehead and said a prayer for inner peace.
EMMA
Emma sat down gently on the edge of her daughter’s bed. The teacup on the table was empty, and the white noise machine she’d dug out of the closet was set to ocean sounds. It was the same machine Kelsey had in her room as a baby, and Emma could still predict down to the millisecond when the seagulls would caw. It had been the soundtrack of her long, sleepless nights, breastfeeding and soothing and crying and yawning. She didn’t miss that level of exhaustion, but part of her wished she could reset the clock and do just about everything differently.
“How’re you feeling?” Emma asked.
“Oh, like I’m about two years old.” Kelsey pulled the blankets up under her chin. “You sure you don’t want to dig out the farm animal mobile? I know you’ve got it somewhere.”
“That seems like overkill,” Emma joked. She glanced around, still orienting herself in the new furniture configuration. The curtains on the bay window, now right behind Kelsey’s bed, were flimsy at best. “Are you sure you want the bed here? The sunlight must hit you first thing in the morning. That can’t be helping with this whole sleep situation.”
“I’m not moving it back,” Kelsey said.
Emma raised an eyebrow.
“What? The room has better feng shui this way.”
Wrong. The girl was completely wrong. But Emma wasn’t about to correct her. Not when her eyelids were already getting droopy.
“We’ll talk about it in the morning.” She leaned in to give her daughter a kiss on the cheek.
“I’m not moving it,” Kelsey repeated.
“Fine, fine.” Emma waved her off as she stepped to the door and shut the light. “Sleep well, honey. No phone, and I’m taking the computer.”
“Okay.”
Emma grabbed the laptop off the desk. It came to life when she touched it, opening directly to eBay. She slapped it closed and tucked it under her arm. She’d check on Kelsey again in fifteen minutes. Hopefully the chamomile and lavender would have done the trick by then.
Downstairs, Emma placed the computer on the kitchen counter and walked over to what had formerly been the garage door. Now it opened on to a big slab of nothing and a POD storage system. It was so surreal, standing there at the top of the step down to the open world. It was almost as if the garage had never existed. As if James had never been there.