How I Came to Sparkle Again by Kaya McLaren Read Free Book Online Page B

other pictures behind his desk—family, dogs, and more fish.
    “Well, listen. It’s normal to be angry after a loss, and if you ever want to talk, I’m here. In the meantime, try to remember that your teacher cares about you and so does everybody else. We might not always know what to do or say to support you while you’re hurting this much, but we care, and we want to help.” Mr. Nelson looked sad.
    Cassie took that as her cue to leave.
    The clock said 2:57, so she didn’t go back to class. Instead, she went directly to the lobby of the school and waited with the kindergartners, who were always dismissed a little before the bell so they could find their parents or get the front seats on the bus without all the chaos. They filed by Cassie, holding little paper turkeys made from tracing their hands on brown construction paper. Cassie imagined the kids giving their mothers the turkeys and their mothers fussing over them and enthusiastically hanging them on the refrigerator or in a window. You have no idea how lucky you are, Cassie wanted to tell each of them, but she didn’t. She quietly walked out the door and headed home.
    When she got there, the house was silent. Socks trotted partway down the stairs to greet her. Cassie tiptoed up the stairs to the door of her parents’ bedroom. Her dad was sleeping, as he often did after a twenty-four-hour shift with a lot of calls. On the floor by his bed was a basket of laundry. Cassie recognized a few items of her mother’s in the basket. He did that. He put some of Kate’s old clothes in the laundry when he did a load. She didn’t know why.
    Cassie went to her own room, crawled into her unmade bed, and clung to her mom’s bathrobe. Socks jumped up on the bed and joined her. Cassie closed her eyes and felt the fuzzy fabric on her cheek, breathed in her mother, and let herself fall asleep. Sometimes, she found, it was just easier not to be awake.
    *   *   *
     
    Cassie and Mike woke in the early evening and watched a sitcom neither of them particularly liked while Mike fried up pork chops and potatoes and warmed some peas in a pan on the stove. Sometimes it was nice just to have noise in the house without the pressure of talking all the time. Mike knew he should talk to her about the phone call he got from her teacher today, but in his gut, he thought it best to give her space. Holidays had indeed intensified the fact that everything had changed.
    They sat for a bit, eating their dinners and watching the stupid sitcom with the canned laughter, and from time to time he’d look over at her to see if she was okay, but she didn’t look back. He wondered how to really tell the difference between when someone just needed space and when you were actually losing them. When they were done, he took their plates to the kitchen and cleaned up, while she went upstairs and took a bath. And when she was out, he kissed her good night and tucked her in. It was a routine they could both do on autopilot.
    He retired to his own bed but didn’t stay there long. Missing Kate was bad enough, but missing her where they had expressed tenderness and passion, where they had lain entwined … it was unbearable.
    So he got out of the too-empty and too-cold bed and went downstairs to stoke the fire. In the wood box was junk mail they had always burned, but now it meant something different. Credit card companies were still sending Kate offers. He burned them. Publishers Clearing House announced she may have won a million dollars. He burned that, too. Catalogs kept coming in her name. He wondered what he would do with her mail next summer when it was too hot to burn it. Maybe he’d build a fire pit so he could burn it outside. Or maybe he’d fill out her credit card applications and list her address as heaven and see if they got the point.
    He went to the kitchen, poured himself some Scotch, and sipped it while he read a self-help book about grief. The only thing the book really seemed to