JENNIE
"Are you coming too?" Brooklyn looked me up and down as she stood by Mom at the front door.
"Yep. I just need to grab my shoes." I sprinted upstairs and swiped my boots off the floor, sitting on the edge of the bed to tie them up.
Did I want to help clean out my late grandmother's house? Not really. But I wouldn't make Mom and Brooklyn do it alone while I sat around and watched Netflix.
With my sunglasses in hand, a hair tie on my wrist and my drumsticks in my pocket, I joined them downstairs. "Ready."
Brooklyn's minivan was parked at the curb. She'd taken the day off work to do this with Mom and the baby was with a sitter. Both of them wore dingy jeans, T-shirts and tennis shoes, likely expecting to do some heavy-duty cleaning and purging.
"Do you have the list, Mom?" Brooklyn's eyes flickered to me through the rearview mirror as she drove, but otherwise, she pretended like I didn't exist.
She probably hadn't expected me to help out today, but when Mom invited me this morning, I'd immediately agreed.
"It's in my purse," Mom said. "All thirty-one pages."
Nan had been busy cataloging her belongings. When Mom had shown me the list earlier, I'd laughed, thinking it was a joke. But no. Nan hadn't wanted there to be any squabbles over her possessions, so she'd taken the liberty to divvy them out herself.
In detail. Color coded.
Goddamn, I missed her.
"I think today we should try to tackle the house and save the garage for later." Mom blew out a deep breath. "The house I know will be organized. But the garage . . . Nan didn't go in there much after she stopped driving. I think it's a lot of your grandfather's things that were too hard for her to deal with."
"Would you like me to go through it?" I offered.
"No, let's leave it. I think your dad wants to help with it too. And Hanbin." We pulled into Nan's driveway and all three of us stared at the front door.
Okay, maybe I should have stayed home with Netflix. How was I going to make it through the door, knowing Nan wouldn't be there to greet me with a hug?
Mom braved her car door first, her movements slower and heavier than they'd been minutes ago. Brooklyn seemed to struggle with shutting off the car. If she decided to drive away and pretend that Nan was still here, she would get no complaints from the backseat.
"Come on, girls." Mom opened the van's sliding door and I had no choice but to step outside. My boots sunk into the thick grass of Nan's lawn that needed a mow. "This is part of life."
Dealing with death.
I didn't want to go inside and riffle through Nan's private things, but I'd do it. Nan had put a lot of time and effort into her affairs and requests, and like singing at her service, the least I could do was honor her wishes.
I took another step but stopped when Brooklyn snapped her fingers and opened the van's rear hatch. "Jennie. Boxes. I'm not carrying them by myself."
If my stage crew knew Brooklyn, they'd never call me a bitch again.
With a bundle of flat, cardboard boxes tucked under each arm, I trudged toward the house behind my sister. Mom led the way, carrying a plastic sack of packing tape and scissors on one arm so the other was free to open the door.
The smell of lavender, fabric softener and vanilla filled my nose. Tears prickled at the corners of my eyes and I ducked my chin as I blinked them away. "So . . ." Mom sighed, hesitating for a moment, before straightening her shoulders and walking into the house.
The lights were off, but the window blinds were up and the curtains open, so sunlight flooded the living room. It looked exactly the same as it had when I was a little girl. Nan's floral-print sofa clashing beautifully with my grandfather's lime-green plaid armchair. The bookshelf in the corner didn't actually have books but a plethora of knickknacks she'd dust weekly. The coffee table was a dainty wooden piece dotted with lace doilies she used as coasters.
A neatly organized stack of magazines rested on the coffee table. The top issue was one I recognized immediately. It was Rolling Stone, and Hush Melodies was on the cover.
"How do you want to divide things up?" Brooklyn asked.
"Why don't you start in here," Mom suggested. "I'll take the kitchen. I'd like to get the refrigerator emptied and the dry goods to the food bank today. Jennie, how about you go through the office?"
"Okay." I waited as she set her supplies aside and pulled out the list from her purse. The office section was ten pages long. Armed with a sharpie, boxes and packing tape, I headed through the house to the office.
Familiar frames hung on the hallway walls, though the pictures inside had changed. Instead of photos of my siblings and me, most were of Nan's great grandchildren. School photos. Family shots. There was even one of Lisa and Louis.
The door to the office was closed and I pushed through gingerly, nervous to disrupt the air. Conscious that I was about to ruin the room's serenity. Dust particles caught the light from the far window as they floated.
I walked to the desk and sat in Nan's chair, my shoulders slumping. Mom and Dad's wedding photo was positioned on one corner. Nan and Grandpa's from decades prior was on the other. In between were Hanbin and Mindy's beside Brooklyn and Pete's.
Four wedding photos.
If I ever married, mine wouldn't join them.
"Ugh." I hung my head. Where did I start? It felt wrong to poke around, but the sound of opening kitchen cabinets and items being tossed into a box echoed down the hallway.
Brooklyn would love nothing more than to scold me if I didn't get through this room, so I opened a drawer and found a row of neatly stacked pens. I checked the list, scanning each page. No mention of pens.
Drawer by drawer I worked, separating items to donate or to trash. Anything noted on the list was set aside for the intended person. A ruler, stapler, ball of rubber bands and a stray paperclip were headed to charity. Nan's half-used notebook could have been trashed, but I decided to keep it myself.
Her neat and tidy handwriting made my heart squeeze and I traced the words with a finger. Every page was a to-do list. Nan hadn't had a planner, just a spiral notebook with the date listed in the upper-right corners. Items on the page were listed beside a checkbox, all including a checkmark.
Except for the last page.
Grocery Store and Prune Rosebush were unchecked because she'd died the night before.
The sting in my nose returned and I changed my mind, placing the notebook in the trash pile.
I filled three boxes by the time I was through with the desk and the bookshelves. Another five by the time I was done with the closet and filing cabinet. The room looked bare without the framed photos or books. The boxes on the desk were sad.
There was only one item left on the list as I dove into the final drawer of the file cabinet.
Letters (file cabinet, bottom drawer) — Jennie
Besides a handful of books, it was the only thing on the office list with my name beside it. I found them bundled together with two rubber bands. The corners of the envelopes were tattered, and the paper had faded to cream from white.
I unstrapped the bands, taking out the first one and turning it over.
It was addressed to Nan with her maiden name. The return was a government base in Germany. They had to have been from my grandfather. Why would she want me to have them? Wouldn't Dad want them instead?
The pages inside slid out easily and I unfolded them with care, scanning the words. As I'd suspected, it was a letter from my grandfather. The beginning was pleasantries, the mention of the weather and how he missed her. It was dated 1943.
He'd written this to her while he'd been at war. They hadn't been married yet, but he wrote to her like they were. The letter wasn't overly sweet, but more of a matter-of-fact report about what he was doing. He asked her questions about her friends and if she'd finished her needlepoint.
It was cute. Endearing. I suspected the others would be too. So why had she set them aside for me?
I flipped the last page over to see if there was more written on the backside after Grandpa had signed his name, and my heart dropped.
There was a poem on the back. No, not a poem.
Lyrics.
He'd written her a song. There was a line of hand-drawn music at the bottom with notes penciled in place. I hummed the short chorus and wished there was more. It was beautiful but incomplete.
I dove for another letter, extracted the pages from the envelope but skipped the actual contents. Just like with the first, the lyrics were on the back of the last page. He'd changed some of the first. He'd penciled in more of the chorus.
My grandfather had spent his time at war writing my grandmother songs.
How many had he finished? Why hadn't we heard them before?
I was giddy to keep going, but Mom's voice startled me.
"How's it coming in here?" She stood by the door with a trash bag in her hand.
"Good. I'm done in here."
"Great. Would you mind helping me tackle her bedroom?"
"Not at all." I folded up the two letters and rebound them with the pile. Then I set them aside to go through later.
Mom and I spent the better part of an hour folding and sorting Nan's clothes. Her cedar chest was earmarked for Dad as it had a lot of Grandpa's things. Though all of Nan's jewelry had been divided between members of our family, none of her clothes had been included in the list.
"Would you mind if I took this?" I clutched an oatmeal cardigan in my hands, hoping Mom would say yes.
"Take it." Mom smiled. "I'm going to go check to see if there are any that Brooklyn wants too."
She breezed out of the room as I brought the sweater to my nose, breathing it in. It smelled like Nan. Like sugar cookies and Downy and warm hugs. I'd seen her wear it a hundred times and the thought of sending it to Goodwill was unbearable.
Brooklyn followed Mom into the room, her eyes filling with tears as she took in the contents of Nan's closet strewn across the bed. She reached for a cardigan, bulky and cable knit, in a dusky blue color and hugged it to her chest.
She breathed it in. When she looked up, my sister made my whole day. She smiled at me. "You can have this one if you'd rather have the blue."
"No, that's okay. I like this one."
"Thanks for helping us today. I think she would be glad that it's us. The three of us."
Mom walked over and put her arm around my shoulders. She took Brooklyn's hand. "I think she would have liked it too."
We let the moment sink deep, then got back to work. Brooklyn stayed in the bedroom to help box up Nan's nightstand belongings while I tackled the clothes and Mom dealt with the abundance of shoes.
By the time lunch rolled around, the minivan was teaming with boxes for charity and I was starved. Our lunch break was a roll through the McDonald's drive-through. Then we went back to Nan's and kept on working. Before we called it quits for the day, we'd taken two more trips to Goodwill.
Brooklyn dropped us off at home, her van empty except for the items Nan had designated hers. She was also getting a dresser and a bureau, but those Pete would help collect.
"Who gets that awful plaid chair of Grandpa's?" I asked Mom as we stood on the sidewalk, waving goodbye to my sister. "Lisa."
"No way." I laughed. "She hated that chair. Remember she called it the lime puke chair?"
"I think it's perfect. Lisa teased Nan about it, but she always sat in it. And Lisa never get rid of it."
"No, she won't." Lisa would keep that chair, exactly as it was, until it either fell apart or it was time to pass it down to Louis.
"Maybe instead of taking an Uber to Lisa's, you could borrow Dad's truck and deliver the chair yourself."
My cheeks flamed. I was twenty-seven years old, but it was still embarrassing that my mother knew I'd gone to Lisa's and had done more than sleep in her bed.
"Is it smart? This thing with Lisa?" she asked.
"Probably not," I admitted.
"You two . . . you never could stay away from each other. Even on the nights you and Hanbin would both lie to me, I always knew you were with Lisa."
"You did?"
"I might not have said anything, but I knew. I assumed as long as you were with Lisa, you were safe. It was the times when you weren't with her that always made me nervous."
"I was just playing in a band, Mom."
"With a group of twenty-one-year-old men who I didn't know. Put yourself in my shoes. You'd freak too."
I thought about Louis and how I'd feel if he snuck out of the house to be left unsupervised with, well . . . Bambam. Yeah. I'd freak.
"If you trusted me with Lisa, why were you always pushing me to spend time with other people?"
My senior year, she'd been constantly harping on me to go out with my friends. To spend one weekend without my girlfriend. The few times I'd doubted Lisa's love, it had been because she'd planted the seed.
"You were leaving," she said. "You two were getting so serious and I just . . . I wanted you to get some distance. Some perspective. You were so young. Too young for that kind of love."
"No, we weren't, Mom."
"You were eighteen."
"And I loved her."
She studied my face, the conviction behind my words. Then a wash of apology crossed her face, like for the first time, she was actually hearing me. She was actually believing.
"It was never fleeting." I pressed a hand to my heart. "It's always been her."
"But you're leaving?"
I nodded. "Yes, I am. We're on different paths."
"You always were." And there, in her words, I heard the warning.
Mom had worried once that we were too young and I'd get my heart broken. She hadn't been wrong. Now she worried our life circumstances would keep us apart.
Again, she wasn't wrong.
Lisa had built a good life for herself and her son. She wouldn't sacrifice her normalcy for me.
I wouldn't ask.
"Well, I'm wiped." Mom brushed a lock of hair out of her face. "I'm going to take a thirty-minute power nap before running to the grocery store."
"I could use a little down time myself." I picked up the box at my feet, a handful of items from Nan's that she'd left to me, then took it inside. With Mom heading to her room, I went upstairs to my own, but not to nap.
Instead, I dove into the letters.
I took my time, reading each, not just the lyrics. My grandfather had signed them all, Love Always. The song had been included in every letter, but when I reached the end of the stack, it was still incomplete. And the letters stopped after the war ended.
At least the ones from my grandfather to my grandmother.
There was one more letter, the envelope newer, with my name written on the front in familiar script. A lump formed in my throat as I took out the single page.
YOUR GRANDFATHER never finished the song.
Do me a favor, finish it for him and for me. Love Always,
Nan
Tears dripped down my cheeks as I read the words again and again. It took me a few moments to blink them away, then I shuffled through the stack of letters again for the first.
Finish the song.
I hummed the first bar a couple of times, but there was no rush in my pulse.
No connection to the melody. I hummed it again. Then again.
Still nothing.
It was plain. Simple. Boring.
I moved to the second letter, seeing that he'd tweaked the lyrics, and only the rhythm of the chorus. The same was true for the third, fourth and fifth. But on the sixth, I saw he'd changed the notes. It was an entirely new bar.
Scrambling off the bed, I whipped out my sticks and sat cross-legged on the floor. I hummed the new bar again, this time tapping out a beat on the carpet. It only took one time through the notes for goose bumps to break out across my forearms. The nape of my neck tingled.
This song would be bold. It would be enduring, like my grandparents' love. It would have a tender undercurrent with the bass, but the melody needed something dynamic.
There was a zing beneath my skin. The euphoria that only came when new song burst from my soul.
Bambam wouldn't need to help me write a song for Nan, after all.
I practiced and practiced, honing that bar until it grew into the chorus. Then I added a hook. When Mom hollered it was time for dinner, I forced myself off the floor. My legs had fallen asleep from the hours seated, but I hadn't noticed.
The song rang in my ears as I ate with my parents and as I borrowed Mom's car to drive to Lisa's house.
I sang it for her and Louis. My grandfather's lyrics and his song that I'd embellished.
For the first time in months, I was energized for the new album. The floodgates were open, and I was ready to unleash, to drown in the music. This was beginning. This song.
The one we'd call, "Love Always."