My sister stepped out behind them wearing designer sunglasses, glanced past the black wreath still hanging on the front door, and said,
“I’m taking the master bedroom.”
I was standing on the porch in Grandpa’s old flannel shirt, holding a cup of coffee I hadn’t touched.
The house still smelled faintly of lilies, rain, and the pipe tobacco Grandpa had stopped smoking years earlier but somehow always kept tucked inside his coat pocket.
Mom climbed the steps like she still had a claim to every board beneath her feet.
“You look terrible, Emily,” she said, as if grief were some kind of fashion mistake.
Dad didn’t hug me.
He didn’t say he was sorry.
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