Chapter 15
NOW
The heat pours through my bedroom window and wakes me up in the morning. That storm must have passed sometime in the night. It had still been raging when we all cleaned up from our Kraft dinner and went to bed.
There’s a weird feeling in my chest. This happens to me a lot. Sometimes it feels like dread or stress, sometimes guilt and regret—like I said something I shouldn’t have or did something embarrassing. But sometimes, like now, it’s not easily linked to something.
Except for everything, I guess. My mother is dead. My mother’s dead body is in a casket downstairs. I’m here with people I never thought I’d see again.
It’s already over.
The reality of that makes my head spin. The whirlwind of this weekend is already almost over. Today there will be a funeral. Then my mother, these people, and Birdsong will all be in my past. For real this time.
Is that … what I want?
I sit up and see that my clothes from yesterday are back in my suitcase, clean and folded like they were before I wore them and left them in a pile on the floor before bed.
Weird. Did someone do my laundry?
I follow the smell of coffee, down the stairs and to the kitchen. Everyone else is on the porch talking.
I pull myself an espresso and then go out to them. Austin is in his running clothes again. Nora with a plate of fruit and cheese in front of her. Matt clutching an iced coffee.
Sammie standing at the end of the table facing them all, her skin as white as a sheet.
I step out and all of them look in my direction. I tilt my head. “What’s up?”
Sammie swallows hard. “Didion … something weird is going on.”