4. The House That Held Them #2
Jenna stepped inside first. The floor creaked in the same spots it always had, as though the house remembered her.
Biscuit slipped past their feet and padded toward the living room, where sunlight pooled across the worn rug. Emmie followed him, her shoulders rigid, eyes sweeping the space like she expected her mother to step out from behind the kitchen doorway.
Coffee mugs still sat by the sink. A sweater hung over the back of the couch. A half-burned candle waited on the counter.
Marilyn’s voice was soft. “I tried to tidy up a little before the funeral. Couldn’t bring myself to move much.”
Jenna shook her head. “No, this is right. Leave it.”
Emmie’s fingers trailed across a framed photo on the mantel, her and Grace dusted with flour, laughing at something out of frame. She didn’t say anything. She didn’t have to.
Jenna swallowed hard, her chest tightening.
So much of the place was still Grandma Hart — the floral wallpaper, the built-in bookshelves, the smell of lemon oil on the furniture.
But Grace’s touch was everywhere too; in the farmhouse colors, chalk-painted cabinets, and little signs with handwritten quotes she’d never actually lived by.
It was equal parts past and present, memory and work to be done. Biscuit leaped onto the couch, circled twice, and settled in a patch of light.
Aunt Marilyn stood near the doorway, glancing from Jenna to Emmie.
“I stocked the fridge with a few things,” she said gently.
“Nothing fancy, just sandwich meat, milk,and that sweet tea Grace liked. There are still a few party trays from the service in there, too. I didn’t want them to go to waste. ”
Jenna nodded. “Thank you.”
Marilyn hesitated another beat. “You two are going to be all right. Just . . . give each other time.”
Then, she stepped back onto the porch, closing the door behind her. Through the window, Jenna watched her cross the walkway, unlock her car, and pull away until the taillights disappeared past the bakery’s corner sign.
The quiet that followed felt too big for the house.
Jenna moved through the rooms, touching the edges of things: the corner of the counter, the back of a chair, the wall where Brooks had measured Emmie’s height in pencil marks.
Grace had lived here for more than a decade, and the house had carried every version of her: daughter, sister, wife, mother, survivor.
The silence here wasn’t peaceful; it was hollow.
It was the kind of quiet that echoed. Every sound she made felt too loud.
Grace had left her handwriting everywhere; sticky notes on the fridge, reminders taped to the cabinet, and a half-finished recipe on the counter.
Little fragments of her, still trying to hold the world together.
But even surrounded by them, the house felt empty.
Emmie stood in the middle of the living room, backpack still over one shoulder. Biscuit had stretched out across the couch as if he’d never left. A late-day sunbeam fell across Grace’s old throw blanket, turning its pale blues almost white.
“You hungry?” Jenna asked after a while. Her voice sounded foreign in the space.
Emmie shrugged, “Not really.”
Jenna nodded, pretending that was fine. “There’s food if you want something later.”
The truth was, there was enough food to last a month.
The deep freezer in the bakery’s storage room was packed solid—foil-covered casseroles, lasagnas, baked ziti, chicken divan, all stacked in neat, labeled rows.
Sympathy sealed in aluminum. People meant well.
They always did. Feed the grief, keep the hands busy, leave behind something that says we were thinking of you.
Emmie didn’t answer. She set her backpack down by the wall and went to the window, looking toward the bakery next door. The lights were off, the windows dark. “It feels weird,” she said quietly. “Seeing it like that.”
“Yeah, your mom never let that place sleep.”
Emmie nodded, her eyes still fixed on the darkened kitchen. “It still smells like her bread.”
They fell into silence again. Jenna looked around the room, unsure what to do with her hands. There was an empty glass on the table, a folded throw blanket on the chair—small things that didn’t belong to her and never would.
When the sun dipped lower, shadows crawled across the floorboards. Jenna realized she didn’t even know where she was supposed to sleep.
The guest room down the hall was half an office now with a desk covered in invoices, ribbons of receipts curling at the edges, and Grace’s handwriting looping across notes she’d never throw away. Jenna had peeked in once, seen the chaos, and closed the door again.
That left Grace’s bedroom.
The thought of it made her throat tighten. She could picture it even without looking: the floral quilt, the stack of paperbacks on the nightstand, the framed photo of Emmie from middle school. The idea of lying down in her sister’s bed felt like trespassing.
“I’m going to grab some sheets,” Jenna said, more to fill the air than to announce a plan.
She opened the hall closet and found a faded quilt folded neatly on the top shelf—one their grandmother had made.
She pulled it down, shaking out the cedar smell, fingers tracing the worn stitching.
Grandma Hart was gone. Brooks was gone. Grace was gone.
Yet here was the quilt anyway, softened by decades of washing and use, the seams carrying the quiet evidence of hands worn tired by baking, cleaning, raising children, and loving them hard enough to make something that would outlast them all.
When she turned, Emmie was standing in the doorway, arms crossed. “You can take Mom’s room,” she said. “I’m not sleeping in there.”
Jenna froze. “I don’t think I can, either.”
“Then the couch?”
“Maybe for tonight.”
Emmie nodded once, then disappeared down the hall to her own room. A door clicked shut.
Jenna spread the quilt across the couch, smoothing it over Biscuit’s fur until he gave a grumpy chirp and relocated to the armchair. The silence pressed in again, heavier this time.
She sat down, elbows on her knees, staring at the pattern of the rug. She could hear the low hum of the refrigerator, the whisper of the ceiling fan overhead, the kind of sounds that used to mean home, but not hers.
Grace had been her bridge to everything here, to their parents, to the town, to Emmie. Without her, Jenna realized, she didn’t really know how to reach anyone.
She leaned back against the couch, the quilt rough under her fingertips, and whispered into the empty room, “What now, Grace?”
There was no answer, only the slow rhythmic creak of the house settling for the night.
She thought about those years after Grandma Hart and Manny died, how they had all found ways to keep going, even if they weren’t under the same roof. How grief felt different then, shared, almost manageable. And how easily it had all unraveled after Brooks.
Brooks was gone. Then Jenna left. Then Troy changed. Grace had always been the glue, but even glue wears thin.
Outside, the wind brushed against the screen door. The scent of sugar and rain drifted through the open window from the bakery.
It had been a long time since she’d felt so close to her sister, and yet so far from her, all at once.