Page 56 of Her Alien Neighbor

She crosses her arms and huffs a breath. “Okay, I believe you.”

“Is that why you came over here? To interrogate me?”

“No,” she replies, “I’m here to spread Aunt Franny’s ashes with you. It’s my day, remember?”

I definitely did not remember, but that’s fine. She’s here now. “Of course, I remember. Where does she want you to spread them?”

“Um, by the mailbox.”

My brow furrows. “The mailbox. Really? Why the mailbox?”

“It’s none of your business,” she hisses, and the expression on her face makes her look like she’s ten years old and yelling at me to stay out of her diary. “Can we just go?”

“You want to do this in the rain?”

She looks at the weather app on her phone. “It’s supposed to do this all day, turning into sleet overnight. We might as well do it now.”

“Ugh, fine,” I grumble, grabbing an old poncho from Aunt Franny’s coat closet. I also take an umbrella to hold over Willa as she carries Aunt Franny’s urn.

We reach the mailbox, our teeth already chattering, and Willa hands me the urn before taking the umbrella. Then she pulls out a folded piece of paper from her pocket and clears her throat.

“Aunt Franny, I know we weren’t always close. I have a theory that you didn’t like me as much as you like Vanessa because I look like my mom, and you hated her.” She chuckles, and I notice her eyes filling up with tears.

“But there is a memory I have of you that will always hold a special place in my heart. I was six and came here to visit you with Dad. Vanessa was home with Mom, and Dad brought me here to practice riding my bike. Your street is so quiet and is a perfect straight line until that big hill at the end. So I was going back and forth along the road, practicing turning and using my brakes, and I took a sharp turn to avoid the mailbox and fell right over.”

Willa laughs as a tear runs down her cheek.

“My knee was scraped up pretty badly, and the gravel from the driveway cut up my hands. I remember Dad running over from the car, and you put a hand up and said, ‘I got this.’ Then you ran toward me at full speed and lowered into a crouch with your foot out. I can still feel the bits of dirt and gravel hitting my face as you slid in next to me like you were stealing home plate.”

That pulls a giggle from me as I can totally picture her doing something kooky like that.

“You showed me your scrape, and it was much worse than mine. You said we were tough girls, and tough girls deserved to be pampered. We spent the rest of the afternoon on the couch, with ice packs on our scrapes, and Dad running back and forth from the kitchen to refill our lemonade.”

Willa lets out a choked sob. “It’s one of my favorite memories. I felt loved, and the scrape didn’t hurt anymore, once I knew you felt it too.”

I can’t watch my sister cry without getting choked up. Especially after hearing that. Hot tears sting my eyes as she folds the letter and puts it back in her pocket.

“Thank you for making me feel less alone,” Willa whispers to the air. “I know it was only one day, but I’ll never forget it. I love you.”She wipes the tears from her cheeks. She hands me the umbrella and takes the top off the urn. Willa sprinkles Aunt Franny’s ashes at the base of the mailbox in a gravelly spot right next to it where Aunt Franny’s epic slide must’ve taken place.

We’re both quiet as we walk back inside. We remain quiet as we take off our coats, remove our shoes, and return the urn to the mantle. Willa strolls around the living room, then the kitchen, looking closely at the various knickknacks Aunt Franny placed on every shelf. She peeks out the window on the back door and turns. “How’s it going with the neighbors? They giving you trouble?”

I don’t know if it’s the mention of Axil and his brothers, or because I’m still emotional from hearing Willa’s letter to Aunt Franny, but I immediately break down. Sobs rack my body as it all sinks in, and Willa wraps me in a tight hug as she leads me over to the couch.

I hear her mumble, “The fuck is wrong with this thing?” as she looks at the misshapen back of the couch that is cracked in several places, but then her eyes are back on me. “What happened, Van? Tell me everything.”

But I can’t. There’s so much to tell, and I can’t share any of it with her without exposing what the guys really are. Though, I suppose I can minimize the events over the last twenty-four hours to a mere sentence or two. That should be enough because I definitely have to give her something. “I’ve developed a bit of a…a thing with one of the neighbors. And now there are feelings involved. I’m really confused, and I don’t know what to do.”

Willa pulls me in for another hug and rubs my back. She whispers “It’ll be okay” over and over, and after a while, I start to believe her, if only because I’m too tired to argue. She pulls back with a wide smile. “Hey, why don’t you come over for the day? You can hang with the kiddos. I know they’re dying to see you. Ethan is home. We’ll have dinner.” She looks around with a slight grimace. “It’ll be good for you to get out of this house for a bit.”

“Yeah,” I reply, confident that seeing my niece and nephew will be a nice change of pace. They are tiny balls of energy and trying to keep up with them will occupy my mind enough so I don’t spend the entire day overanalyzing my situation with Axil. “Yeah, that sounds good.”

Willa claps, excitedly. “Yay! Okay, let’s go.”

The rest of the day passes by quickly, due to the endless chaos of being in a house with two kids. We eat lunch, we play dress-up, the kids play tag, Jane convinces me to join her tea party––which is really just a gossip session about her other dolls and the scandalous activities they’ve been up to in her dollhouse––there’s a brief nap, then they wake up and want to do it all again. I’m completely exhausted by the time dinner is served. How does Willa do this every single day?

“Auntie Nessa, you sit here,” Jordan says, patting the back of the chair to his left.

“I’d be honored, little dude,” I reply, putting my plate of spaghetti and meatballs next to his.

---