Page 66 of Every Sweet Thing Is Bitter

“The pits are, like, the size of a pea.”

Now the recollection has been soured for both of us, an eye for an eye, another happy memory of our mother ground to dust. Grace’s dress pools around her as she lowers herself to the earth again. She holds the chokecherry bunch in her hand like Snow White with her apple, the stems and berries lacing between her fingers. “What did you need to talk about?” She utters the question in a single breath. I pretend like she isn’t eager to get away from me. “Dad’ll be home for lunch soon.”

I think about my mother showing Grace which trees have ripe fruit. I think about them harvesting bunches of chokecherries with wicker picnic baskets. I think about them painstakingly extracting the pits, holding their breath because they are nervous about wasting too much good fruit.

“Why did you wait to report her missing?”

Exactly as I feared, I see the wheels in her head spinning, plotting out her next move. “I’m sorry, what?”

“You waited a whole day. Why?”

“Sometimes she just didn’t come home. I didn’t think anything of it.”

“She always came home. She wasn’t even allowed to leave overnight for funerals.”

Grace does her best to meet my stare, but the confidence rings hollow, no more real than a little girl trying on her mother’s high heels for the first time and thinking she’s finally a grown-up. “Well, things have changed,” she manages.

“Grace, please. If you know something, tell me.”

“What are you accusing me of?”

“Lying,” I fire back.

“I didn’t do anything! I talked to the cops. I talked to them a hundred times.”

“She always came home. He wouldn’t give an inch on that.” Every time I try to sayDad, my tongue loses its way.

She pulps the chokecherries in her hand. The juices trickle down her forearm in rivulets. She squeezes, squeezes, squeezes until the berries are no longer berries, only purple paste oozing between her fingers. “I didn’t do anything.”

“Then tell me why you waited.”

Flies are drawn to the sweet fruit remnants. Two of them buzz around her in erratic circles, their flight noiseless and weak as if they will die without this meal. “Because she was running away.”

“She never would have run away.”

“You didn’t know her as well as you think, Providence.”

I am a believer in the classic truism that people do not change. They might evolve around the edges, but who they are at their core will always remain the same, constant as the sun rising in the east. My mother was never one to upset the status quo. Decades married to our father instilled in her that the only way to survive was to be seen and not heard, shrinking yourself as small as you can possibly be. After all these years forcing herself to be small, what finally made her drum up the courage to leave my father?

Courage. The word has teeth I don’t expect. Whatever courage my mother mustered, it was only enough for her, not her and Grace both. Grace is the girl forever left behind, drawing love from wells that have long ago run dry. We were born in thewrong order. It should have been Grace first, so the sister who deserved the most love would have been given the most love.

“How do you know she ran away?”

“She told me,” Grace says, voice cracking, “not when or where, but that she was going to. She made boxes for Harmony and I to remember her by, just little trinkets and birthday cards, nothing special. Harmony didn’t even care. She thought Mom was getting rid of old keepsakes from the attic. When she didn’t come home, I figured she finally decided to do it. I didn’t worry.” She pulls her knees to her chest. “She told me she would call when she got to Rapid City. There’s a women’s shelter there. So I waited. And then she didn’t call. A whole day went by, and I knew something was wrong.”

She snivels and begins to tremble, and although my duty here is to comfort her, my mind snags on the wrong thing. Grace and Harmony got boxes. Grace and Harmony got goodbyes. I didn’t even get a voicemail. My mother opened her mouth to speak to me and died before she could say a single word.

“Was there a box for me?”

“I—I don’t know. She didn’t show one to me.” The answer isnoand she is too kind to say it.Nowill cleave me in two.

“Is that really everything, Grace?”

“It’s everything.”

“Because if—”

She cuts me off. “I swear on Mom’s ashes. There’s nothing else.”

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