Chapter 7

In Memoriam

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Catch up on chapter 6 here.

Dad tells me we have to hurry if I want to make the gingerbread house now because people will be there for the memorial after lunch. I almost back out. It may not be enough time to finish the project at all, let alone do a halfway decent job on something that people will see soon, but I desperately need a distraction.

“Then we better get started.”

I brace the walls as Dad spreads icing between them for glue, then we switch for the side closer to me. “What happened with your audition?”

I’m trying to keep my hand steady as I ice. “You were listening?”

“Seems like it didn’t go the way you wanted.”

It’s an understatement, but at least he paid some attention. “I didn’t get the part. He told me right away.”

Dad shrugs and the walls wiggle. “You’re only a freshman. You have three more years to get into — what were you auditioning for?”

“For the pit orchestra, Dad. For the school musical.”

“So you try again next year. It’s not a big deal.”

“Yeah, you’re right.” I nod. “It doesn’t matter.” It feels like a big deal to me. But I don’t have any proof of that, so I can’t offer any. “Mr. G told me I could audition to accompany the choir. Rehearsals start in January, so I have to prepare another piece. I was hoping I could get your advice.”

The house is intact now, a little wobbly on the far corners. Dad and I reach for a roof piece at the same time and it snaps in half. My hands shake and my breathing speeds. We have to fix it. People will be here soon.

Dad doesn’t even notice. He’s opening up the individual packs of candies. “I was never a performer. What advice could I give you?”

I hold the two pieces of the roof together with one hand, trying to ice the fissure with the other. “I need to choose a new piece. Something difficult, but choral, and… he told me he wants more than hitting the right notes. I don’t know what that means. I don’t know what a lot of things mean. Not what Mr. G said, not what Pastor Clark said when I was playing.”

My hand slips and one side of the roof slides off, the way I feared the roof of this house would crush me when I first got here. Dad saves it, but only just in time. “That’s not asking for advice.”

“It’s asking for information, and I need that, too.”

Dad grabs a knife and globs frosting over the crack in the roof. “Look, Munchkin. I know it would be nice if we could go back in time to fix our problems. Get a redo on important moments.”

The roof is only half-frosted, but we drop the pretense of working on it entirely. I grit my teeth and brace the counter. He doesn’t get it. He doesn’t get it at all. “I’m not trying to fix that audition. I’m trying to figure out what to do with the next one. And that means figuring out the advice I got and applying it. I thought you could help. I was obviously wrong.”

He hasn’t made eye contact with me since I brought up the audition, focusing all his effort on the gingerbread house instead. It’s ready to decorate, I guess. I place candies on my side of the roof in even rows, a pattern. Dad puts his down at random. We both pave icing paths to the front door, two completely different ways to get to the same place.

I’m still focusing when Dad stands abruptly and says our guests will be here soon and he needs to prepare. Soon he’s in his snow gear, then driving away in his truck, leaving me to alone finish what we started together.

I’m done before Dad comes back, but soon after he’s in the kitchen again with a Costco platter of sandwiches and bottle after bottle of alcohol. Though I still haven’t eaten lunch, I steal a leftover sour candy from the gingerbread kit and let it melt in my mouth as I go upstairs to change into my black turtleneck and slacks again, the only mourning clothes I brought. Dad didn’t warn me about the memorial. I’m not even sure it was part of the plan until the steak dinner, when Dad and his siblings spent half the time discussing things in whispers that felt more like shouting.

Old-fashioned Christmas songs croon through the speakers as people come in. I evaluate every person I see, people who were background noise in my life as a kid, older adults and my grown-up cousins and the babies they held the last time I was here, now chasing each other around the coffee table. Does she know about my brother? Would he tell me if he did?

But I’m afraid to ask. I don’t fit anywhere in this house. Too old for the children who trip over my legs as they play, too young for the adults who gather with cocktails around counters. What I wouldn’t give for one person I could talk to. I grab a wine glass, find sparkling cider buried at the back of the counter, and fill my cup. I’m going to ask the next person I see, I promise myself as I pivot out of the crowded kitchen.

Someone bumps my elbow and cider sloshes over the edges and seeps between my fingers. So I guess this is the person I’m asking. The top of her ponytail brushes against my cheekbone. “Sorry,” she says before she even looks up.

I study her, looking for pieces of myself, but I don’t find any. Round face, greenish eyes. Confident smile. Red wine in her glass. Maybe she’ll remember something I don’t. “It’s fine. Hi. How old are you?”

She laughs and takes a sip, then meets my eyes for the first time. “Adaya, isn’t it? I’m Lauren, Uncle Jeff’s youngest.” Oh, right. She was off at college the year I moved. I hardly remember her at all. “Last time I saw you, I swear I could look right over you, and here I am looking up! How’s California? How’s your mom? I haven’t seen her since, well, you know.”

“We’re great, thanks,” I say. It probably isn’t true, but she’s not looking for the truth. And that’s not what I need to talk about. “Hey, can I ask you something? Pastor Clark mentioned something about a brother at the funeral. Who could he have mistaken me for?”

Lauren lifts her glass to her lips and a lot of wine disappears before she answers me. “I’m gonna watch the slideshow Dad made of our grandma’s life. You should, too, sometime. Really interesting. Fascinating life she led. Nice seeing you!”

Then she’s gone, while I stand, utterly still, between the children and the adults, unmoving but still in everyone’s way. I make my way to the living room where the kids are playing. Meghan sits on the edge of an armchair, a Mike’s in her hand while a toddler crawls between her legs. Sloane and Liam are playing Pokémon Princesses, both of them in tiaras and calling out invisible Pokémon to fight one another.

I sit in the armchair next to Meghan’s. As much as I’d love to play with my cousins’ kids, that won’t help me figure anything out. “Can I ask you something?”

“What do you need?”

I take a breath, and in the moment I hesitate, Sloane trips over the edge of the coffee table and lands directly on Meghan’s toddler, who wails.

“Can you set this down for me? I need to make sure they’re okay.”

“Sure. I’ll put it in the kitchen for you. By the gingerbread house.”

Once I’m in the kitchen, I don’t come back. Meghan has more important things to worry about than me. Every other adult I pass is more than halfway through a drink. Everyone I try to talk to disappears the moment I say anything.

Which means Pastor Clark didn’t mistake me for someone else. I have a brother I never knew about, and no one wants to talk about him.

I move between looking for someone who might give me a clue as to what’s going on and checking the time on my phone, trying to calculate when it wouldn’t be a disgrace for me to steal back upstairs for some alone time. In a pause in this dance, I notice two college-age women sitting on the stairs holding hands. The one with the dark purple pixie cut looks familiar and both of them look as out of place here as I feel.

“Mind if I sit, too?” I ask.

“Adaya, isn’t it? Grayson used to talk about you,” the purple-haired one says.

As I sit down, I recognize her. When I lived here, her hair was shoulder-length, the same blonde as Grayson’s, with a single teal stripe in the front. “Taylor?”

She nods. “And this is my girlfriend, Courtney.” She’s got long black hair pulled into a braid. Her dark brown forearms are covered in bracelets of every variety — charm, leather, plastic — and her smile is electric.

“Nice to meet you,” I say.

“We were just discussing the disastrous results of The Great British Baking Show finale, if you want to join us,” Courtney says, and I curl up into their conversation. It’s the perfect thing to distract me. Watching fantastic bakers when I’m terribly bad at baking is soothing. They’re allowed to be better than I am. They’re supposed to be better than I am.

Soon a familiar voice cuts across our conversation from the far side of the stairs. “Hey, Taylor. Courtney. Glad you made it.” Grayson does not say hi to me. Not that I blame him.

Courtney stands and envelops Grayson in a hug and Taylor joins them. “You doing okay?” Taylor says as they pull apart. “You didn’t have to come, you know.”

He nods, hands in his pockets, shoulders slumped. He’s not all right and he’s not even trying to hide it. “I told Mr. Finley I would. And I wanted to be here. I miss being here.”

Grandma Nancy isn’t even related to him. I’m not even as relevant at this memorial as Grayson. I stay sitting on the cold wooden step.

Their conversation turns almost immediately into family gossip, stories I don’t understand except that they’re designed to lift his spirits. Grayson only glances at me long enough to be sure it’s me, and proves by how quickly he looks away that he doesn’t want to talk to me. I need out of this place.

I could go back to my room if I wanted to, but I’d be too easy to find. I want to be as alone as I can possibly manage in a house full of people here to remember someone who isn’t. There’s only one place that’s good enough for that. I stand and turn to climb the stairs until the party is a doll house at my feet. Then, instead of taking a right and going into the room I’m staying in, I take a left to a door that’s always closed, a door I’ve only opened once.

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