One Kiss for My Last Month novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Sunday One

Mom greets Maddy at the gate with the first kiss and pancakes, and seems to know when to say slow breaths; by afternoon Grandma Maureen has moved every Sunday to the library.

On Sunday, Dad drove me to Mill Street and kept the engine running.

"Four o'clock," he said. "Don't make me come up."

I got out at the iron gate beside the bakery.

The whole street smelled like cinnamon.

Mom was already standing there in her gray cardigan with her hands in her pockets.

She had been standing there a while.

She did not run to me or say my name.

She walked up slowly, bent down, and kissed my forehead one time.

Her lips were dry and warm.

"That's one," I said.

"One," Mom said. "Come up, I made pancakes."

The apartment was over the bakery, up a steep flight of narrow stairs.

I went slowly on every one of them.

At the top, I held the doorframe and breathed through my mouth.

"Sit," Mom said. "Slow breaths. Don't talk yet."

I sat at the little table by the window.

I had not said a word about my breathing.

Maybe she had just heard me panting on the stairs.

The apartment was one room with a curtain across the corner and a bed behind it, and it smelled like pancakes and bread.

She had hung my old drawing of a horse on the wall over the stove.

There was a toothbrush in a cup by the sink with a yellow handle.

Mine.

"I got you a toothbrush for Sundays," she said, not looking at me. "In case you want to stay late."

"Mom, I can't stay late."

"I know. It's just here."

She set a plate in front of me, with three pancakes and a pat of butter, and sat down across the table.

She didn't eat.

She watched me eat the way she used to when I was little and had a fever.

"Is the house okay?" she asked. "Do you have enough blankets? Does Alana feed you?"

"Alana gives me granola bars."

"Good."

"Grandma Maureen keeps giving me peppermints."

Something moved in Mom's face and was gone.

"I heard," she said.

I put my fork down.

"Mom, why didn't you fight for me?"

I had meant to ask something smarter.

Mom looked at her hands.

"Because you picked," she said. "You stood up in that room, with everyone looking, and you picked. I wasn't going to take that away from you."

"Maybe I picked wrong."

"Maybe you picked right."

"Mom."

"Maddy, eat your pancakes."

I ate.

She kept her eyes on the window.

I tried a different way in.

"If I told you something strange, would you believe me?"

"Try me."

I opened my mouth.

The words were all there.

I had lived this day before, and I had died on a Friday in October, and I had watched you work until you broke.

Then I looked at her hands and remembered how they looked in ten years, cracked from bleach.

If I told her, she would spend her last dollar on a heart doctor before the sun went down.

She would do all of it again.

"I think I have a hole in my heart," I said, and I made my voice small and silly. "From a TV show."

Mom's face went very still.

"A TV show," she said.

"Yeah."

"Hm." She stood and took my plate. "Well, you'd better tell your dad."

"I did. He laughed."

"Of course he did."

She said it very quietly, with her back to me, running water over the plate.

When she turned around, she was smiling.

"I got a new job," she said. "Near your school. Don't be mad."

"Why would I be mad?"

"Because you'll see me a lot." She dried her hands. "I'll be there every day, and you can pretend you don't know me if you want."

"Where?"

"You'll see."

We spent the rest of the day on the floor with a puzzle of a lighthouse.

She let me do the sky.

At a quarter to three, I heard a car in the street.

Mom stopped with a puzzle piece in her fingers.

"He's early," she said.

Dad's truck was parked at the gate, and Grandma Maureen sat in the passenger seat with her window down.

She waved a white envelope at us.

"Signe, dear!" she called. "Sorry to cut the day short. Craig's lawyer wanted this to reach you right away."

Mom walked down the stairs and took the envelope.

She read the single page standing in the street while Dad stared at the dashboard.

I read it over her elbow.

From now on, the Sunday visit would take place at the Marlow Falls public library, in the reading room, from two to four.

An adult family member would be present.

"Just until everyone's settled," Grandma Maureen said. "For Maddy's sake. She's so very fragile right now."

Mom folded the page along its crease.

Then she knelt and kissed my forehead, one more time, and I counted it.

Two.

Out of eight.

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