Disclaimer in part one.
Enjoy! Reviews are like cookie dough without the calories!
The ride home was silent, punctured only by Nick's fingers drumming out erratic rhythms on the steering wheel. Sara leaned on the door and stared outside. Grace stared down at her fingers. Jules's eyes jumped nervously from person to person. Finally, Grace caught her eye and gave her an annoyed stared. Jules looked down at her lap, too, after that.
The last rays of sun were reflecting off the front windows of the house as Nick glided the car into the driveway. Sara was surprised to see Greg slouched on their front steps, two boxes of pizza angled on his left and a six-pack of beer and two 2-Liters of soda on his right. He stretched and stood as they got out of their car and fumbled with their bags.
"Hey," he approached them awkwardly. "I…figured you'd hadn't eaten yet. I brought you pizza. From Delfino's. One cheese, one veggie. And I brought beer. And soda for the girls—Diet Dr. Pepper for Grace and Diet Mountain Dew for Jules. I was just waiting with them. There's no pressure or anything; I'm just going to go. I just thought food would be nice. If you want, I can go grocery shopping for you later. You probably don't have much food, do you?" He finished nervously. He looked angular and whippet-lean in a baggy navy sweater and baggy, dark-blue jeans. His hair was refreshingly messy.
"Thank you, Greg." Sara said tiredly. "Do you want to come in? You shouldn't have to wait with the pizza and not enjoy any of it."
"No, that's alright." Greg said quickly.
"No, I mean it." Sara secretly wanted him to stay, hoping he'd provide some comic relief or some dumb jokes or something to make the girls crack a smile. "Seriously. Nick's staying." Nick looked quite surprised at this pronouncement, but quickly recovered and nodded. "I'll even have Delfino's send over a half-mushroom, half sausage and pepperoni for you guys." That clinched the deal for Greg; he nodded, looking very relieved.
Sara unlocked and pushed the front door opened. Nick, pulling her suitcase, followed, then the girls and Greg with the food. "Jules, Grace, why don't you run your stuff upstairs?" Sara said. "Then come back down; we'll unpack later." The girls said nothing, and followed her instructions.
"The mail should all be in the kitchen," Greg called from the dining area.
Sara sifted the mail through her fingers and let it cascade to the counter. There wasn't anything worthwhile—just a bunch of junk mail, bills, a few sympathy cards, and college mailbox clutter. The girls need to get on that, she thought to herself, and the feeling of overwhelmedness, which had been temporarily assuaged, returned. The volume of details she needed to catch up on exhausted her. She checked the voicemail, finding only one call from Margaret, who wanted to see the girls Tuesday morning.
"Sara, come on. Food's up." Nick called from the table. She could smell the pizza spices wafting towards her.
"No fair; I didn't call in your meat monstrosity yet." The girls were seated on one side of the table, Nick and Greg on the other. Sara awkwardly took the chair at the head of the table. She wistfully looked over her shoulder at the door to Lilly's bedroom. It had remained closed since Lilly went into Grace House. "Jules, Grace, Margaret wants to see you tomorrow at Grace House. Ten A.M. Do you want me to drive you down?"
Grace shook her head. "That's fine. We'll just take the Taurus."
"Okay." Sara said. "There's some mail for you. College filler, if you want to look at it. There're a couple of applications in there, too. I think I saw UPenn?"
"God." Jules said, looking at her plate. "It's almost October. I can't believe it."
"You've got time." Sara said noncommittally. "You'll be fine." She reached for a slice of veggie. "I think you should go back to school on Wednesday." She said the last part quietly and casually, as if by speaking softly she could avoid an outburst.
She was wrong, and she knew she was going to be wrong. "What? You're freaking kidding!" Jules said. "We can't possibly go back to school already!" Grace's face looked crushed, and started twitching to avoid outright crying.
"Jules." Sara said, trying to keep her voice calm and rational. "Listen. Please. I have thought about this. You've been out for more than two weeks and you're taking an extremely difficult course load. Your teachers are very forgiving and understanding, and they'll help you of course, but there's a point where there's too much school missed. I've talked with your calculus teacher; there's a test every week. This is calculus. It's a bitch no matter how much you like math. And your English classes—you've probably finished a novel in there by now! All your other courses—there's been essays and papers and everything. You need to get back on track." She paused, hoping to not use her trump card. "Your mother would have wanted it. It'll…it'll but things back into focus. Please, guys."
Almost predictably, Jules snapped. "Don't even try to bring Mom into this! I'm not ready; I need at least another week! I can't believe you don't get that." She threw her paper napkin over her slice of cheese and stormed upstairs.
"Honestly." Grace gave Sara a sharp, betrayed look. "Sara, we're not ready." She followed her sister upstairs.
Sara heard a satisfactory thud as she plunked her head on her palm. "I think I'm supposed to go after them, and rationalize, and make them see things my way, right? Be the grown up in the situation and everything." she asked to nobody in particular.
"That's generally what happens in Lifetime movies," Nick swallowed a slice of pizza.
"No, that's more Hallmark movie of the week." Greg said, with a little too much knowledge. "In Lifetime movies, the teenager's allowed to stomp off. They're usually pregnant or something. In Hallmark movies, there's a tearfest and a mutual understanding eventually gets reached."
Nick stared at Greg for a little bit. "We're just gonna let this moment pass, Greggo."
Sara rubbed her eyelid. "Well, I never was a fan of Lifetime movies," she got up from the table. "I'll be back, guys."
"It's okay. You probably shouldn't've had company tonight." Greg said. Sara heard a muted kick, then a suppressed owwe from Greg as she reached the top landing.
She stood in front of Jules' door for several long seconds before knocking and walking in. "You're supposed to wait till I say come in," Jules' voice was muffled by a pillow, and she sounded more bemused and tired than actually mad. Grace was sitting in a chair in the corner, her feet propped on to Jules' bed. Her face was stormy and scared and constricted and conflicted. It twitched occasionally, the muscles around her mouth and eyes clearly not cooperating.
"Jules, sit up, we should talk." Sara's voice was much more organized and task-oriented than she felt. Jules rolled over and up, and brushed her hair out of eyes warily.
"What?" was all she said. "There's nothing to discuss."
"Yeah, there is." Sara's mind suddenly went blank. "You need to be calm and listen, both of you. Don't think I haven't thought this out." She pulled out her trump card early. "Seriously. It's what—it's what Lilly would have wanted."
"Quit using that bullshit line." Jules said fiercely. "Mom would not have wanted to make us uncomfortable or cause any unnecessary pain. And she would've respected our decision, which is to wait until it feels better." She started her wimpering whine up again.
"No. I really don't think so. Remember how she pushed you to stay in school until the very last minute? Lilly thought in terms of the long-range plans. She put long-term gain over personal pain. And you can't skip a month of your senior year in high school. It doesn't work that way."
"Sara," Grace's voice was tentative and reconciliatory. "I know you want us back in school. But, we're not ready. We can't go in and just go around like nothing's different. Honest. We won't be able to handle it. It's better for us—even if it might not look that way—if we just wait a few more days. Take a breather. Get—get more stabilized."
"What are you going to do? You spent all of last week doing the walking around the house bit, the looking through her things. The funeral was very delayed. If the funeral had been last Saturday, you would easily be back in school, and you'd be fine with it, because you wouldn't have a reason for staying at home anymore. But, since we pushed the services back, it just feels like you need more time. You girls are stronger than you think. Tomorrow, you'll go in to school, and we'll talk to your teachers. You're going back Wednesday." The looks on their faces broke Sara's heart. "And I think you'll be better than you think."
"Sara—no. You don't get it. It's—paralyzing. It's seriously paralyzing. I mean, yeah, logically we know that Mom's in heaven and she's not in pain anymore and we've had time to process that, so we're no mad or even sad about her dying anymore or anything, but emotionally we're still completely lost. It's like those weird cult things, where they rebirth the kids in the wool blankets—like how that seven-year-old died or whatever? It's like we've just been reborn. And we've got to get used to the way everything feels and looks and tastes again. It's just so different from what we're used to. And we still miss her so much—it's tangible. I've lost people before, I guess; there was a cat and our father and this guy who sat next to me in Keyboarding died in a car accident sophomore year, but then it was remarkable that they were so completely and ... just gone forever. Now, I can feel it. When I move it feels different. You can't make me go back to school. I'm not ready." Jules' face was painted with dirty tears. Her voice cracked, "I can't. I can't."
"We—we know you're trying your best to respect Mom's wishes." Grace said tentatively. "But—Sara, you loved Mom in your own way, but you can't believe the way it feels right now. It's so lonely, and scary, and sad, and empty."
"Really?" Sara's voice was deadly. She didn't make eye contact with them. "I don't—I don't understand an absolute, complete loneliness and detachment? I don't understand what losing a parent feels like? I can't comprehend the way it feels when you've been flipped upside down several times by the shitty hand you get dealt. I don't know fear?"
Grace's eyes widened as everything clicked. "I—Sara—I don't mean it that way."
"Grace, I've lost more parents than I've had." Sara's voice was tinged with anger, but mostly persistent and argumentative. "I lost my father to a bullet, my mother to prison, and then my mother rejected me because she couldn't handle it. I had nine different homes when I was a teenager. Girls—you have been through a lot. And, granted, your mother's circumstances were entirely different from mine. But I think that you're totally capable of going back to school. It's scary, yes, but it's not dangerous and it's not detrimental, so you're going. Wednesday morning, school starts up again. Girls," she looked down and traced the stitching pattern in the comforter. "I'm not your mother and I'm never going to try to be, but don't toss out my eighteen years on you, my life experience, and the fact that I'm trying my best to respect your mother's wishes. I'm just trying to be fair. She wanted someone to watch out for you and that's what I'm trying to do. It's tough but school is seriously the best thing for you right now." She stood up. "I'm going to finish my pizza. Delfino's is like the best pizza in a twenty-mile radius." She left.
The girls looked at each other, wide eyes filled with trembling tears. "Grace," Jules questioned quietly. "Have you opened your letter yet?"
"No." Grace said. "Have you?"
"No—it's like the last link to Mom, in a way, you know? I'm scared."
"Me, too." Grace whispered.