Page 28 of The Family Plot
“Why don’t you take a break?” I suggest. “You’ve been baking nonstop.”
“I don’t need abreak,” Mom snaps, and the cookie drops to the floor. We look at it there, split into three chunks. Mom closes her eyes and takes a slow breath.
“I don’t need a break,” she repeats, calmer now. “I want to do this for you. You’re all going through so much. You’ve lost your father, your—” She thrusts out her hand to cup my face. Instinctively, I back away, but she catches my cheek in time. “Andy!” she continues. “Oh, Dahlia, you’ve lost Andy.”
The stroke of her thumb feels like a scrape.
“So have you,” I say.
She nods, face pinched, as if she’s concentrating on holding something in. Tears, maybe. Or words.
“Yes,” she says after a moment, hand slipping from my face. “Yes, I lost him, too.”
She inhales shakily and points her gaze away from me. “I just want to do something to comfort my children. I’ve never made you cookies before. What kind of life is that? Going without cookies from your mother. My mother made me cookies all the time, and I…”
Her lower lip trembles, but she sinks her teeth into it, biting hard.
“Hey,” I say, “we did all right. And anyway, Andy and I were more into pie.”
I mean to make her smile, but instead, she lifts her eyes to mine, horrified.
“I don’t know how to make pie,” she says. “I can barely make these goddamn cookies!”
I flinch in surprise. I’ve never heard her curse.
Andy was the one to teach me swear words, which he learned while hunting with Dad.He said “fuck” when the deer got away, Andy relayed one day.And he warned me not to repeat it. Especially around Mom.
Fuck, I said quietly, cross-legged on my bed.
Fuck, Andy parroted. He shifted his body so it mirrored my own.
Fuck, we said together, clapping hands over our mouths, catching the laughter that frothed from our lips.
Now I blink. I do it again and again—until I don’t see him in front of me anymore, until there’s only Mom, and the kitchen, and this gutting absence that will never be gone.
“I was kidding,” I say. “Cookies are great. I’m just not hungry right now.”
Mom pushes strands of brown hair back toward her floppy ponytail. “Oh,” she says. “Well, I’ve been putting them in Tupperware when they’re done. You can have your pick, once you’re ready.”
“Thanks.” I attempt a smile. “But— Did you hear my question when I came in? About the trapdoor?”
Mom turns back to the stove, using the spatula to transfer the cookies to a cooling rack. “A trapdoor? Where?”
“In Fritz’s shed. Under the carpet.”
“Oh,” she says. “That.” She lifts another cookie and slides it into place with the rest.
“What’s it lead to?” I ask.
“Just a little basement area. My family used to use it for storage. But the shed’s been Fritz’s domain for decades now, basically since I was a teenager. I imagine it’s still just storage. Old tools and such.”
“Do you have a key for it?” I ask. Because her answer doesn’t satisfy me. If Andy had seen Fritz withold tools and such, it wouldn’t have left him so unsettled.
She tilts her head, considering. “I don’t know,” she says again. “It’s possible your father made a copy of Fritz’s—but I doubt it. It’s Fritz’s space. We’ve always trusted him to use it right.”
“WhereisFritz? I didn’t see him outside.”
“Oh.” Mom waves a hand through the air, casually dismissing hisabsence. “He needed some time off after—” Her hand jerks to a stop. “After the other day,” she finishes a moment later. “He’s understandably shaken.”
