Page 2 of Things We Left Behind
“Where’s Chloe?” Mom asked.
Maeve rolled her eyes. “She’s got it narrowed down to two outfits and told me she needed some time with each one before she could make her final decision,” she said, squeezing herself onto the cushion next to our mother.
My niece was a fashionista of the highest caliber. At least the highest caliber a twelve-year-old on a limited allowance in rural Virginia could achieve.
We rocked in silence for a few moments, each lost in our own memories.
“Remember when your father bought the Christmas treethat was so fat it couldn’t fit through the front door?” Mom asked, a smile in her tone.
“The beginning of our porch tree tradition,” Maeve recalled.
I felt a stab of guilt. I hadn’t put up a porch tree this Christmas. I hadn’t even put up an indoor tree. Just the now-dead wreath I’d bought from Chloe’s school fundraiser. Cancer had made other plans for our family.
I would make up for it next Christmas, I decided. There would be life here. Family here. Laughter and cookies and alcohol and badly wrapped gifts.
That was what Dad had wanted. To know that life would go on even though we missed him terribly.
“I know your father was the pep talk giver,” Mom began. “But I promised him I’d do my best. So this is how it’s gonna go. We’re going to march into that funeral home and give him the best damn funeral this town has ever seen. We’re going to laugh and cry and remember how lucky we were to have had him for as long as we did.”
Maeve and I nodded, tears already welling in our eyes. I blinked them back. The last thing my mom or sister needed was to deal with a volcano of sad from me.
“Can I get a hell yeah?” Mom said.
“Hell yeah,” we answered in quavering voices.
Mom looked back and forth between us. “That was pathetic.”
“Geez. Sorry we’re not chipper enough about Dad’s funeral,” I said dryly.
Mom reached into a pocket in the skirt of her dress and produced a pink stainless-steel flask. “This should help.”
“It’s 9:32 a.m.,” Maeve said.
“I’m drinking wine,” I countered, holding up my mug.
Mom handed my sister the ladylike flask. “As your father liked to say, ‘We can’t drink all day if we don’t start now.’”
Maeve sighed. “Fine. But if we’re going to start drinking now, we’re taking a Lyft to the funeral.”
“I’ll drink to that,” I agreed.
“Cheers, Dad,” she said and took a nip from the flask, wincing almost immediately.
Maeve handed back the flask, and Mom raised it in a silent toast.
The front door banged open again, and Chloe vaulted onto the porch. My niece was wearing patterned tights, purple satin shorts, and a ribbed turtleneck. Her hair was styled in two black puffs on top of her head. Maeve must have lost the makeup battle today, because Chloe’s eyelids were a deep shade of purple. “Do you think this will take too much attention away from Gramps?” she asked, striking a pose with her hands on her hips.
“Dear lord,” my sister muttered under her breath and stole the flask again.
“You look beautiful, sweetheart,” Mom said, grinning at her only grandchild.
Chloe executed a spin. “Thank you and I know.”
The pudgy, grumpy cat I’d inherited along with the house slunk onto the porch looking judgmental as always. The half-feral fleabag had been given the regal name Lady Mildred Meowington. Over time, it had been shortened to Milly Meow Meow. Nowadays, when I had to yell at her for the eighteenth time not to claw the back of the couch, it was just Meow Meow or Hey, Asshole.
“Go inside, Meow Meow, or you’ll be left out all day,” I warned.
The cat didn’t dignify my warning with a response. Instead she brushed against Chloe’s black tights and then sat at her feet to lavish her feline butthole with attention.
