Page 15 of A Thousand Little Goodbyes

Grandma looked the way Grandmaalwayslooked when someone turned down her tea—like someone had left a pile of garbage on the living room floor.

“Are you sure?” she asked. “I have a lovely chamomile that I grow myself on our little terrace.”

Scarlett rolled her eyes in Chrissie’s direction, sure that her friend would share in the mortification of adults who grew things like tea and then sat sipping it for hours and hours, but she only stood there clutching a pillow in one arm and a stuffed rabbit in the other, an enormous overnight backpack sagging halfway down her body.

“I’m sure,” Chrissie’s mom said. Scarlett hoped that would be theend of it, and they could all head back up to the apartment to get this party started, but Grandma wasn’t done yet.

“Then I’ll make a few sachets for you and send them home with Chrissie,” she said. “I always found a good cup of herbal tea soothing on those nights when Scarlett was at the hospital without me. It’s not a cure for a broken heart, but it’s something.”

“Please don’t,” Chrissie’s mom said sharply. As if aware that she’d been rude, she forced herself to add, “You’ve already done enough.”

She looked down at Chrissie then—Chrissie, who hadn’t made a peep except the sound of her breathing; Chrissie, who was staring down at her shoes and looking so miserable that Scarlett wanted to take a cup of hot tea and throw it in her mother’s tightly pinched face.

“Don’t be any trouble,” she said, and then she did the same thing Chrissie’s dad had done—lightly touched the top of her daughter’s head as though testing to make sure she was real.

But they didn’t kiss her. Didn’t hug her. Barely even looked at her, really. Even Scarlett, who couldn’t remember her own mother, knew there was something wrong with that. Especially when they got in the car and peeled away without once looking back.

Scarlett groaned when her grandmother didn’t even wait for the car to be all the way out of the parking lot before darting forward and pulling Chrissie into her arms. Her grandma was a good hugger—no one was denying that—all soft and pillowy with the smell of the baby powder she used to dry her skin, but it took her forever to let go. She hugged some of the kids at the hospital for so long that they actually fell asleep against her.

“Grandma, the cookies are gonna burn,” Scarlett tried protesting, but her voice was swallowed up by the sound of her grandma murmuring some kind of nonsense in Chrissie’s ear.

Scarlett knew what the nonsense contained.You’re all right. I’ve got you now. Aren’t you the sweetest thing I ever met? I could just gobbleyou up.None of it ever made any sense, and it almost always ended up including the snacking on children’s bones as if Grandma lived in a gingerbread house with an oven built especially for the job, but none of the kids seemed to mind.

This was no different. By the time her grandma let Chrissie go, her new friend’s face was streaked in tears, her whole body heaving as she tried not to sob all over the parking lot.

“It doesn’t matter, love,” her grandma was saying as she hoisted the girl on her hip and started carrying her toward the stairs. “You just come on inside and have a little snack. We’ll take good care of you.”

Scarlett wanted to protest that Chrissie waswaytoo old to be carried like a baby, but one look at the way Chrissie clung to her grandma’s neck had her clamping her mouth shut tight. She also grabbed the backpack and stuffed rabbit, which had fallen to the pavement during the painfully long hug.

The backpack was too heavy for her chemo-wasted muscles, but she didn’t complain as she marched up the steps in her grandmother’s wake. Scarlett wasn’t a very good hugger, and she didn’t want to gobble anyone up, but for once, she and her grandmother were on the same page.

As long as Chrissie was insideherhouse, with her lopsided hair on a pillow next to hers and that look of sad, miserable heartbreak on her face, Scarlett was going to take good care of her.

That was a promise she planned to keep for the rest of her life.

* * *

“In this one, Mary Kate and Ashley go to the Eiffel TowerandNotre-Dameanda special French dance.” Scarlett pushed the play button and settled in beside Chrissie to watch the third movie in their marathon. “Someday, I’m going to Paris, too. And New York, and London, and Hawaii, and maybe even San Francisco. What about you?”

The night was well advanced by this time, the pair of them settled in their blanket fort and the plate of cookies sitting empty on the floor. Even though Scarlett was barely able to keep her eyes open, she was determined to eke out every minute before sleep robbed her of her friend.

She’d always hated that sleep had the power to do that—not just to steal people, but to stealtime. When she was grown up, she wasn’t going to sleep any more than she absolutely had to.

“You can come with me to France if you want,” she said when Chrissie didn’t respond except to yawn loudly into her fist. “We can be just like Mary Kate and Ashley. In fact, in a few months,bothour hair will be long enough to cut like theirs. We’ll look like sisters.”

Her use of that word—sisters—made Chrissie wince and hug her knees to her chest. Too late, Scarlett realized what she’d said.

So far, both of them had been careful to avoid the subject of Chrissie’s brother. They also hadn’t talked about the hospital, Chrissie’s parents, or the fact that they’d practically pushed a seven-year-old-kid out of the car before driving away.

But Scarlett wanted to know. Sheneededit.

“I never had a sister,” she said, hoping that would do the trick. “Or a brother. Just my grandma. My mom left me with her the first time I got sick. I was only three years old at the time, but she said the cancer was too much for her to handle on her own.”

She sat and blinked expectantly at Chrissie. On the TV, Mary Kate and Ashley were running to greet their grandpa in France, but neither girl was paying them much attention.

“My brother’s name was Malcolm,” Chrissie said, and Scarlett felt a ripple of alarm at hearing the name spoken aloud. In all the weeks she’d been getting chemotherapy and trying to worm her way into Chrissie’s heart, she’d never once heard her speak her brother’s name. “He was a few years older than me. But I had a sister once—sort of. She was my twin. I ate her.”

That made all of Scarlett’s sleepiness disappear in a flash. She bolted upright and hugged her knees to her chest in the same posture as Chrissie. “Youateher? Why? What did she taste like?”