“All right.”
“She might as well get with a rock star! She’d have about the same chance!”
“Fine.” Jamie rose to her feet.
“I have a way better chance of getting with Greer than Marissa ever will with Tyler!”
“Well, it looks like you’ve clearly figured out the cliques at school after just one day.” Jamie eased toward the door. Cease-fire was over. Harley was again throwing slings and arrows.
“It’s just such a pisser! And Greer’ll probably be thrown out of school. He didn’t even wear the metal claws. That was Troy. And Tyler’s in trouble, too. He had on the hockey mask.”
Goose bumps rose on Jamie’s skin. Halloween mask . . . “What mask was Greer wearing?”
“The one from the movies.”
Jamie had never told Harley the particulars about how the boys from Emma’s class had scared her with a Michael Myers mask. Harley knew about the attack, but not all the ins and outs, unless someone told her or she read about it. Clearly that hadn’t happened as yet, or she would know how that particular mask would affect Jamie and, more importantly, Emma.
She was feeling anxious inside, both from Harley’s take and from something else, too, that she couldn’t quite define.
Harley sighed and settled into the bed. Now that she’d passed on her fears to Jamie, she was more relaxed. Realizing it was her cue to leave, Jamie headed into the hall. “Thanks, Mom,” she thought she heard Harley say as she was shutting the door behind her.
She went back downstairs. Found the key on the kitchen counter, as Emma had said. Hurrying outside to put it back into place, she felt a shiver slip down her spine from the stiff breeze rattling the maple leaves and heard the soft ding, ding, ding of the garden wind chime.
Back inside, she double-checked the door was locked, then went through the first floor checking windows and the front door. Upstairs, she walked through her mom’s room to stand by the window and look over the garden and the side of the garage for long moments before she undressed for bed and made her way to her closet bedroom.
Chapter Ten
It was a trick getting Emma to wait until Sunday evening to scatter Mom’s ashes in the garden. The waiting made her anxious, and beside making sure all the dish towels were lined up, she couldn’t help herself from going into both Harley’s and Jamie’s bedrooms and doing the same to their bath towels, not to mention organizing their personal beauty supplies. Jamie had come back to find her rather meager supply of facial creams and nail polish and hair supplies lined up by descending height. Harley got the same treatment, but Emma also organized her eye makeup, laying each piece on the counter in neat rows by width, fattest to skinniest. Jamie talked it over with Harley, expecting her to have a conniption fit, like she would if Jamie touched anything of hers, but Emma got a pass.
“If it makes her feel better, fine.” Harley shrugged.
“Okay.”
“But if she touches my backpack . . .”
Harley’s backpack apparently held her most prized possessions. Jamie had unapologetically sneaked through it a time or two, afraid there might be secrets within that could cause harm, but had only discovered doodles in the margins of her notebooks with different boys’ names, one surrounded by a heart . . . only to be scratched out the next time Jamie had peeked. These forays into Harley’s life were few and far between; her daughter was very careful. Jamie hadn’t been able to check in a while. Now, she said, “You’ll have to give her a pass on that, too. You can ask her not to look again, and she might respect your wishes, but getting Emma to alter behavior is a trick I haven’t learned yet.”
Jamie had gone to the store and purchased a variety of crackers, several cheeses, and some fruit. She was really low on funds and was trying to stretch the budget until she could earn some income. It broke her heart a bit when Emma, who’d been with Jamie at the store and apparently understood why Jamie was carefully adding the items in her cart, pulled out a hundred dollars in twenties. “I didn’t give it to Mom because she was dead,” Emma explained. “You can have it.”
“I don’t want to take your money,” Jamie had told her, but Emma shook the bills at her.
“I want you to make bucatini carbonara.”
“What?” Jamie had asked faintly.
“It’s pasta,” Emma explained, and when Jamie took a moment to think that through, she clarified, “noodles.”
“I think it’s on one of her saved Food Network episodes,” Harley told Jamie later. “She likes pasta.”
Jamie had dutifully found a recipe online and bought all the ingredients, but she was planning on attempting the dish sometime in the future. She wasn’t taking that on on the same day they were scattering Mom’s ashes. Jamie had invited Theo to join them, but she already had plans, and then Harley had begged, begged, begged her to let her have Marissa come over, too.
“Marissa doesn’t need to be spreading Mom’s ashes,” Jamie had told her a bit heatedly. In truth, she just wanted it over herself.
“Pleeeeeaaassseeee . . .” Harley had pressed her palms together and gazed at her beseechingly. “I’ll be the only kid and I don’t even want to do it.”
Emma had overheard this ongoing battle and had kept out of it. But on Sunday morning, Harley turned to her aunt and asked, “Don’t you think I should have someone here?”
Jamie opened her mouth to protest, then shut it, waiting. Emma walked across the room to the urn that held their mother’s ashes. She touched her forehead against it and closed her eyes, which made Harley and Jamie slide a look to each other. After a full minute, Emma lifted her head and walked
