Page 237 of Things Left Unsaid

When I shuffle past Walker’s room, I press a hand to the door.

The grief never stops. The tears diminish. The anger fades. But the longing never goes away. It’s a lingering ache that I know I’ll feel until I die.

Because I don’t want to make things worse, I don’t open his door. But I do open Mom and Dad’s. It’s exactly how it was that last day…

Even the sheets are mussed because after Dad died, she stopped making the bed in the morning.

Gaze flickering from one picture frame to another, I feel emotions clog my throat. The air’s musty. Dingy, to be honest. But I like it. It’s a shrine. Just as Walker’s room is. Though it’s a lot less dusty in here than I imagined.

For the first time since she passed, I breach the entrance.

I pause at her vanity and lift the bottle of perfume on there. It smells faintly of her, but not. Less fruity somehow.

I spray some on my wrists, disappointed by the slightly alcoholic tint to it that’s more prevalent once it’s been exposed to the air.

Pulling open the drawers, I smile when I find the makeup I used to play dress-up with.

The gold tube of lipstick doesn’t gleam thanks to the myriad fingerprints covering it and there’s powder everywhere—Mom was many things, but not a great housekeeper.

I take a seat on the cushioned stool and stare at my face in the mirror.

I’d been a kid the last time I sat here. She’d stood behind me. Shaking her head as I managed to spread mauve eyeshadow over my face and spill my glass of orange juice everywhere.

My fingers trail over the gold ridge that edges the table. It was probably an heirloom. That it was spared from the cull that happens whenever we run out of cash and sell off our antiques tells me how important this shrine is toGrand-mère—it will never be touched.

Not as long as she lives.

My gaze turns distant until I find a slight ridge that doesn’t fit in somehow. I peer at the table, applying pressure to it, thinking it needs to be moved back into place. But as I do, it depresses entirely and a soft clicking motion sounds.

My lips part as a drawer opens, a small one.

Inside, there’s a book. Nothing more. Just that.

It’s black. Thin. Like an old-fashioned address book.

Hesitantly, I reach for it.

A faint musty smell permeates the air as I crack a spine that hasn’t been touched for years.

At first, I’m not entirely sure what I’m seeing aside from a bunch of numbers and letters… Then, when my mind shifts away from surprise and begins to function, I pick apart what I’m reading.

It’s not a diary, more a ledger, one that tallies the household budget for weeks at a time. Each page is filled with months’ worth of numbers as if she were conserving space, but it means the book is filled with years of records.

She notes the cost of groceries, the price of clothes—a ‘W’ for Walker, an ‘S’ for me, and ‘Cs’ for the triplets. At the side, Mom wrote a ‘+/-’ sign to keep a running total and that number would have been bleak were it not for the four hundred dollars added to the budget every four days.

And I mean every four days.

For years.

It’s the ‘CK’ that’s at the side of it that has me slamming the book shut.

Because I’d prefer to argue withGrand-mèrethan think about what that means, I slip it into my pocket, head for her room, and knock when I finally make it there.

“Entrez.”

I roll my eyes at that and immediately, my mind shifts away from the ledger.

God, she’s so pretentious.

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