They Fought Over Who Had to Keep Me novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: The Song

Crispin sets her terms in her grandmother's apartment and his mother arrives with a cake, until Lacey's phone shows nine missed calls from Hattie.

"You told him in April," I said.

"I told him twice. Once at the funeral and once by phone." Crispin picked up his paper cup and found it empty. "Both times he said he'd tell you himself."

Rain ran off the awning in a line.

I held his hoodie closed at my neck and did not cry on his stoop.

"Can I see it?" I said. "The apartment."

He took a ring of keys from his pocket, then looked at my hand and saw I was already holding mine.

"Right," he said. "You have a key."

Unit 1A was the first door on the left past the mailboxes.

I put the brass ladybug key in the lock, and the door opened onto the smell of Grandma's kitchen.

Lemon oil, burnt toast, and the lavender sachets she kept in every drawer.

Nothing had moved.

Her afghan was folded over the arm of the couch, in orange and brown squares.

Her reading glasses were on the table next to a crossword with three words left to fill.

The only thing new was a clean white envelope propped against the sugar bowl.

"The utility company sent a form," Crispin said from the doorway. "I didn't touch anything else."

He stayed in the doorway with his shoulder against the frame and did not come in.

I sat down at her table.

"Why did she pay a whole year ahead?"

"She told me she wanted one place you couldn't be moved out of." He rubbed the back of his neck. "She said you'd need it before you knew you did."

I picked up the crossword.

The clue she had not solved said Seven letters, a place to belong.

I put it down again.

"What are the terms?" I asked. "There are always terms."

For the first time that night, he almost smiled.

"Rent is covered through January. Utilities and internet are not. Your grandmother wrote it right on the receipt, so it's her rule and not mine. Two hundred dollars a month, from your own paycheck."

"I make eleven an hour at the pharmacy."

"Then you make two hundred dollars in about two shifts, and nobody here is giving you anything for free." He said it gently. "She was clear on that part. She said you'd be insulted if anyone tried."

"She was right."

"She usually was."

I looked at the white envelope again.

It had my name on it, in Grandma's handwriting.

I did not open it.

There was a knock, three times and then once more, and the door swung wide before I could say come in.

A woman in a floral apron stood in the hall holding a cake on a plate, with a dish towel over her arm and a plastic lighter in her teeth.

She took the lighter out of her mouth.

"Crispin Michael Rainey, you didn't tell me she was here."

"Ma, I was going to."

"I heard the stairs." She came in sideways, because her hips and the cake both needed the room. "Lacey, honey, I'm Maureen. Your grandmother and I did crosswords for twenty years. You've been in my kitchen, you just don't remember. You were twelve and you ate all my snickerdoodles."

"I remember the snickerdoodles," I said.

"Good. Then you'll eat this."

She put the cake down on Grandma's table.

It was a plain yellow sheet cake with white frosting, and the top had been decorated in blue gel, a little crooked.

Happy Birthday Lacey.

My throat closed.

"How did you know?"

"Your grandmother kept a list on my fridge door of every birthday in her family," Maureen said, "and she asked me to take yours when she was gone. She said no one in your house would remember to do it right." She stuck eighteen candles into the frosting without counting them. "I've been working on this since Thursday. Crispin, get the lights."

"Ma, she's wet. She's cold. She walked here."

"All the more reason."

He turned off the overhead light.

Maureen lit the candles one at a time, and the kitchen went gold.

Then she took a breath, and so did he.

They sang.

Maureen's voice was big and flat and nowhere near the tune, and Crispin's was low and a half beat behind, and neither of them cared.

I stood there with the afghan around my shoulders, listening to two people who had known me for about ten minutes sing me happy birthday all the way to the end.

At the last line I leaned over and blew the candles out.

My eyes were stinging.

"Make a wish," Maureen said.

"I already did."

She cut me the first piece, with the corner frosting, and handed it over on a paper towel.

I ate it standing up.

It was dry on the edges and sweet in the middle, and it was the best cake of my life.

Crispin had cut himself the smallest slice and kept looking at me over it.

"Thank you," I said to both of them.

"Don't thank me," Maureen said. "Thank your grandmother."

"I will."

I took out my phone to take a picture of the cake, the first thing all day I wanted a picture of.

The screen had nine missed calls.

None of them were from my mother, and none were from my father.

They were all from the number I had saved as Mom's iPad.

There was one new text, from the same number, typed in the careful letters of a seven-year-old.

It said: I SAVED YOU A PIECE. ARE YOU COMING BACK. THEY ARE YELLING AGAIN.

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