Page 139 of Hot Tea & Bird Calls

While packing some clothes (because those would probably be important), a sound that once made Skye jump to action ignited a grin instead.

“Come out here,” Luce’s voice boomed from the intercom. Straight to the point, no filler.

Throwing on a hoodie to combat the chill of the greater part of the house, Skye walked the plush path down the hallway, silent upon the long rug. The corners hadn’t curled again. Though Skye would be around to correct them if they wilted up anymore.

True to habit, Luce had gotten dressed in her outfit for the day already, save for her slippers. Allowing Skye’s good morning kiss to her temple, Luce pushed a cup of coffee forward. “How long have you been up?”

Skye knew to find a small clock on the counter. 6:29 a.m. “At least five hours.”

“I could barely sleep, either,” her grandmother mused, pouring oat milk into her own mug. “I saw the light on under your door.”

“I’ll be right down the street.” Skye patted the hand Luce didn’t notice she’d been clutching so hard, the milk carton bent. Her stomach clenched similarly.

“Friends, a social life, family, a career...” Luce smiled at nothing. “I’m blessed.”

Blessed. Luce rarely used terms that hinted at her abandoned religious background, so Skye knew something serious awaited them. “You are.”

“Come.”

Leaving her coffee behind, she tailed after the shuffling that’d become a part of the acoustics of her living experience. She soaked it all in.

Yet more confusion than anything met her when Luce stopped at Walter’s study.

Skye waited. Was there a point? Gazing into the room, longing she’d never gotten used to hit her, and for that, she was thankful to get distance. Keeping Granddad’s room pristine still made her uncomfortable. It’d once encouraged passion, a lens into learning new things.

Her grandmother wasn’t smiling. Not frowning, either. A placid expression, the only hint of anything deeper seen in the light gloss of her dark eyes.

Luce raised an arm, a simple gesture over the gate. “Go on.”

Uh.

Skye swore she’d hallucinated; maybe she’d fallen asleep somewhere in the middle of packing. Because up would be down, east became west before Lucille Florentine ever,evergave her spacey granddaughter permission to?—

“Step on over. Before I change my mind.”

Believing her, Skye patted at her hair’s silk wrap in a standoff between hesitation and anticipation. She pressed her bare feet into the cushy texture of Granddad Walter’s rug—this time without breaking house rules, lacking any residual guilt.

Pacing the perimeter of the room Luce preserved for two years, she sniffed for shadows of her grandfather’s scent.

But time had overridden that to a still, neutral scent with notes of adhesive, matching the rest of their home. She touched every spine of outdated encyclopedias, of a globe that yellowed years before a stroke had been a concept without experience. Throat feeling dustier than the room itself, Skye commented, “You’ve kept it spotless.”

“Walter does, too. If he’s somewhere —” Luce gestured to the ceiling, to the space around her. “Out there. In case he wants to visit, he knows his study is here. Just like he left it.”

Skye wiped her cheek, watching the gentle, rhythmic pendulum on the grandfather clock. “I never considered that.”

“I know he’s gone, child. I grieve strongly, but I’ve accepted it.” Luce lifted her mug, then thought better of it. “Pain doesn’t have a timeline.”

The relief tingled through Skye’s muscles, her chest. She hadn’t realized that’d been a pain point of the move until she met Luce’s eyes that watered, too. “I understand.”

God, could sheeverunderstand. Exceptionally, now.

Far, far in the future, she could lose Celene, and she was sure she’d embody absolute devastation. Luce wouldn’t have anything on that. It felt uncomfortable, even, to cry harder, mixing that hypothetical grief with that of her grandparents’.

These ties bonded them all: true loves and the inevitable. Celene probably gained catharsis, an intimate approach to these subjects, from her death-centered books.

Stalling for only a moment, Skye wiggled into Walter’s high-backed lounge chair. It’d been a find from a vintage secondhand shop. “Practically mint condition,” he’d tell every visitor, in the same breath naming all the spots he’d repaired to give it that “like new” finish. Skye used to laugh about it then, and today, she still smirked.

She pulled at each desk drawer as she’d gained confidence in her exploration. Revealing boxes of paperclips and pushpins, fountain pens. A half-used tube of beeswax hand balm. Shiny tesserae sliding out of corners, clinking into each other. She smiled at a stack of outdated magazines,Chromatique Flairprominently on top. A metal magnifying glass. Spools of twine. A mostly empty tin of pomade, which she breathed in with hereyes closed, engrossed by the scent she’d been searching for. Her hands shook as she uncovered the last item that stood out.