Page 62 of Pieces Of You

“Hi, Jamie,” she says, watching me a moment before going back to the puzzle. “Did you need something?”

“Hi, Mrs.—Miss—Ma’am.” I can’t even look at her as I move past her and toward the kitchen sink. “I was just getting water.”

“You can call me Tammy, and there’s a tap in Holden’s bathroom,” she says. Then adds, “Though, not any glasses, so…”

Is she mad at me? For… being here? Holden did say he’d made a promise that he’d stay home, and maybe that extended to having girls over. Does he have girls over often? Is this new? “Yeah,” I croak, heat burning my cheeks. I grab a glass from beside the sink and fill it with tap water. “He’s on the phone with Mia, so I thought I’d give them some space…”

“He is?” she asks, and I somehow find the courage to face her. After a nod, I search for the time, but there are no clocks in this room, and the microwave merely blinks 12:00 as if it had never been set. “Well… that’s good.”

I practically inhale the water, wash out the glass, and then I just stand there, facing the window above the sink. I don’t want to go back to Holden’s room just yet, and I don’t really want to be standing here, awkwardly, with his mom judging me. Anxiousness swirls through me, elevating with every second that passes, each one filled with nothing but silence and the occasional sound of cardboard pieces shifting. Finally, Tammy speaks, “Holden says that you lost your mother recently.”

Slowly, I turn to her, keeping my gaze on my feet as I grip the counter behind me. Heart in my stomach, I fumble over my words. “It was a while ago. I mean, late October, it’ll be a year, so…”

“Well,” she says, after a beat. “Grief has no timeline, right?”

I don’t think I’ve ever reallygrieved, but she doesn’t need to know that. “I guess.”

“Jamie,” she says, and I find the strength to look up. “I was wondering if you could give me some advice.”

“Advice?”

Tammy nods. “On grief.” I’m about to tell her I’m the last person to be dishing outadvice, especially on that subject, but she speaks up before I can. “It’s just that, I’ve never lost anyone super close to me, and Mia… she recently lost her grandfather, and she’s going through an extremely hard time with it all. She’s not eating. Not sleeping…” she trails off, and I look at her. Really,trulylook at her. Her hair’s a mess, similar to my mother’s when she did nothing but fall in and out of drunken blackouts. Darkness circles her red, raw eyes as if she’d just been crying.And I can’t help but look at her the way Holden did when I bared my pain to him—with pity.

I find myself asking, “Are you?”

Distracted with the puzzle piece in her hand, she asks, “Am I what?”

“Eating and sleeping?”

Her gaze snaps to mine, and it’s clear I’ve overstepped.

“Sorry,” I murmur. Obviously, I have close to zero social graces, but I remind myself that it’s not my fault. I’ve never really been…social.

The silence stretches between us, and I push off the counter. “Well, goodnight,” I mumble.

I make it to the doorway before Tammy says, surprising me, “Maybe I’m asking for the both of us, then. For Miaandme.”

I pause, my stomach sinking at the desperation in her words. After inhaling deeply, I turn to her, give her the truth that’ll do nothing to ease her anguish. “I wish, more than anything, that I could give you advice. That I could give you the answers you think you need, but I can’t.” I push through the knot in my throat, the sudden ache in my chest. “I feel like our circumstances of grief and loss are very different.”

Tammy’s slow to nod, her lips parting, but there are no words accompanying the action. I see it in her eyes, the blank stare, the bottomless void, and I can sense that she needssomething.She just doesn’t know what. AndIdon’t know if I’m the right person to help her find whatever she’s lost.

But… I know thatfeeling, that endless searching and hoping and praying forsomething.Even if that something is nothing. And that nothing lasts only seconds.

“The thing is…” I start, leaning against the doorframe, “my mom’s death wasn’t a shock to me. I’d been prepared for months. Maybe even years.” I drop my gaze to my feet again, adding, “In a way, I think I’d considered her dead a long time ago.” My words are harsh, but they’re also reality—a reality I refuse to sugar-coat or wrap neatly in a bow just to spare the feelings of others.

Or myself.

“Maybe you’re right,” Tammy says, her voice cracking with emotion. “John—Mia’spapa—he died of a heart attack. It was only weeks after he had an operation. He umm…” She clears her throat, so close to breaking. “He came here for the surgery, trusted in me to take care of him after, and…”

“I’m sorry,” I whisper, pushing down my own heartache. Maybe I was wrong. Maybe our situations are more alike than I thought. Because the guilt? The guilt is worse than the grief.

“I shouldn’t have let him go back,” she whispers.

A single tear forces its way out of me, and I’m quick to wipe it away.I shouldn’t have forced Mom to leave.

I still remember that day as if I’d just lived it. I remember the warmth of the tears as they soaked through my flesh. My pulse thump, thump, thumping through my bloodline. I can still feel the desperation… the hopelessness clinging to my words, to my pleas, to the very few parts of me that still held on to hope.

We needed to leave.