“There’s still dust,” she’d say, wrinkling her nose. “You missed a spot.”
Meanwhile, Brandon’s room smelled like something had died under a pile of pizza boxes, and Sierra’s floor was a graveyard of clothing and makeup wipes.
No inspection there.
Dad didn’t see it. Or chose not to.
He’d come home from long days at his consulting firm, kiss Tracy on the cheek, eat whatever I cooked, and tell everyone how lucky he was to have such a big, bustling family.
In 2019, Grandma’s heart gave out.
I was nineteen, in my first year of community college.
We’d known she had issues. Doctor appointments. Medications with names I couldn’t pronounce. She still baked too much, laughed too loud, and tried to carry grocery bags she shouldn’t have.
Then one afternoon she went down at the kitchen sink, and she didn’t get back up.
Grandpa lasted three months without her.
“He died of a broken heart,” people said.
It sounded like a cliché until you saw it up close. The way he shuffled around the house, lost. The way he’d sit at the dining room table staring at her empty chair. The way his voice cracked when he said my name like he was trying to remember how to say someone else’s and got stuck with mine.