Part of me wanted to find out what might happen if I did, but the other, smarter part of me answered him. “I’m up.”
“People are going to be here soon and Grace has to get ready.”
My eyes snapped open. I threw the covers off and rolled over onto my back. “Okay, Dad! I said, I’m up.” I didn’t care that I was being sassy. He could punish me all he wanted and it wouldn’t matter. Nothing could make me feel worse than I already did.
He didn’t respond, so I figured he’d gone back down the hall to tell Grace she could have their room back. I wondered how she was feeling, being kicked out of my dad’s bed. I wondered if she was angry we were taking up so much of his time. She’d given me lots of space this week, only speaking to me to offer bits of food or to ask if I wanted to go for a walk with her and Max, letting Dad be the one to tell us we should shower or put our cereal bowl in the sink. She spent the days talking on the phone with her assistant, working on her computer, and cleaning the house. She was quieter than usual, tiptoeing around, hugging and kissing my dad when she didn’t think we were looking. Maybe she didn’t know how to act, either.
There was a soft knock on the door, and Grace opened it a second later. She gave me a half smile when she saw me still lying in their bed. “Hey there,” she said. “Is it okay if I get showered? You can stay in here awhile, if you want.”
I nodded, and she closed the door behind her after she entered. She was wearing black pajama pants with a loose purple T-shirt and her hair was a crazy mess around her face. She was about to go into their bathroom when I spoke up, my own voice surprising me. “Grace?”
She stopped, turned, and looked back at me. “Yeah?” She said the word softly, and with such tenderness, it almost made me cry. I had to force my jaw to stop trembling before I could speak.
“Do I have to be here today?”
Her mouth twitched into a quick frown. “I think it’s probably best if you are. It gives you a chance to say good-bye.”
I thought about this a moment. “But what if I don’t want to?”
She sighed. “I get why you’d feel like that, sweetie. This all really sucks, doesn’t it?”
I looked at her, eyebrows raised, shocked to have an adult speak so plainly, that someone who I’d been so mean to was being so nice to me. “Yeah, it does,” I said. I sat up, pulled Mama’s sweater closed, and dropped my gaze to the mattress. My insides were bound up in knots, but I knew I needed to apologize. “I don’t really hate you, Grace. I don’t know why I said that. I’m sorry.” My voice shook, feeling disloyal to Mama, somehow, with every word. She’d been jealous of Grace, I knew. Jealous of her job; jealous that Daddy loved her. I’d understood that I wasn’t supposed to like Grace, and yet, here she was while Mama was . . . gone. I didn’t know how to feel.
“Ava, honey, look at me,” she said. I did as she asked and gritted my teeth so I wouldn’t cry. She wasn’t smiling, but her green eyes were filled with kindness as she spoke. “I understand, okay? Sometimes we do and say things we don’t mean when we’re upset. So please don’t worry about it. I care about you very much and I’m here for you however you need me to be.”
I nodded briskly, grateful that she wasn’t going to make a big deal out of it. If I had said something like that to Mama, I’d have been grounded for weeks. Grace smiled at me, then went into the bathroom. I lay there a while longer, oddly comforted by the sound of her getting ready—the water running, the hair dryer’s low buzz. It reminded me of listening to Mama get “prettied up” for work. I decided to skip taking a shower and went to my bedroom to get dressed, pulling my hair into a tight ponytail to hide that it hadn’t been washed. I looked in the mirror, reviewing the black skirt and blouse I wore with Mama’s sweater. “Dress for yourself,” she always told me. “What matters is how you feel