CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Grief and Groceries
I haven’t laid eyes on him in a month. And somehow, it feels like no time has passed, and a thousand lifetimes have.
Brooks stands in the kitchen totally in shock. His hair is longer now, the ends curling gently at his neck. He’s grown a short beard. Not unkempt, just enough to make him look older, weathered. Like someone who’s been shouldering the weight of a world I left behind.
"You… uh… home." He coughs, like the word got stuck on the way out.
"I did come home," I say, my voice quiet. Careful.
"Permanently?" His tone is cautious, like the answer might burn.
I nod. "Yes. Permanently."
He shifts his weight and takes a step back, like he needs space to recalibrate. I can’t tell if it’s relief softening his jaw or something else. Hesitation, maybe. Fear.
"I thought long and hard—"
But I don’t finish the sentence. Because down the hall, a door creaks open.
Brooks tenses in front of me, and we both instinctively move toward the sound.
Mom.
She stands there like a faded photograph—gaunt, pale, still wearing the same shirt she had on when I left.
Dad’s flannel. The one she clung to like it was the only part of him still real.
Her hair is piled on top of her head, brittle and unwashed.
Her shoulders slope like even gravity has given up on holding her together.
"Mom?" I whisper, barely able to get the word out.
She blinks slowly, like she’s seeing us from underwater. "We need groceries, Elowen. Can you go to the store and get some?"
I swallow the lump in my throat. "Yes."
She nods and disappears again, the door closing with a soft but final click behind her.
Silence.
For a moment, neither of us breathes.
Then Brooks says quietly, "She hasn’t left the room in three days. And before that, she didn’t come out for two weeks."
My heart sinks. She’s still unraveling, and I wasn’t here to stop it.
I rub my arms, suddenly chilled. "Can you, uh, drive me to the store?"
His gaze lifts to meet mine. For a second, something flickers there. Something I used to recognize. His eyes are softer now. Not angry. Just… tired. "Yeah."
I nod slowly. "I need to buy a car soon."
Brooks lets out the faintest breath, like maybe he’d been holding one. "I’ll drive you, Ellie," he says, gentle but distant. Like it’s just a favor. Like we’re just two people in the same house.
I open my mouth to say something more, something honest. But I don’t.
"Okay," I say instead.
The drive to the grocery store is quiet. Not comfortable quiet, awkward quiet. It hums just beneath my skin and makes me hyper-aware of every blink, every breath, every street sign we pass.
Brooks keeps his eyes on the road, one hand on the wheel, the other draped across his lap. He doesn’t say anything. Not a joke, not a sigh, not a single glance in my direction.
I can’t think of a damn thing to say either.
This isn’t like us.
Brooks is usually full of snarky commentary, always something dry and cutting. And I always throw something back at him. It’s how we’ve always communicated. With banter. With heat.
But now? Now, it’s just silence. Dense and unyielding.
I glance out the window and try not to fidget. Maybe this is what happens after falling into bed with someone I knew I shouldn’t fall for. After undressing not just physically, but emotionally. After leaving without saying goodbye.
We’ve seen each other naked.
And not just skin and bones, but bare, vulnerable, trembling with grief and need. That kind of nakedness rewires everything.
Maybe that’s what’s changed.
Maybe that’s what neither of us knows how to talk about.
"You’re awfully quiet over there," Brooks says, finally breaking the silence.
I glance over, caught. "I’m sorry."
"You don’t have to apologize," he says, eyes still on the road.
"No." I shake my head.. "I’m sorry I left the way I did. I… I never should’ve gone back to L.A. I didn’t know how to stay. Not really. And I’m sorry for dumping everything on you. On Jasper. On Mom."
Brooks doesn’t answer right away. When he finally does, it’s soft. "I didn’t mind."
But that’s the thing, he never minds. He just absorbs it. Carries it all like it weighs nothing, even when it clearly does. He’s always been like that. He’s always shouldered everyone’s burdens like he was built for it.
"I want you to know," I continue, "I see what you did while I was gone. What you’ve always done. It gave me space to figure some things out. About where I want to be. Who I want to be. The kind of daughter and sister I should have been this whole time."
He doesn’t look at me, but I can feel the tension in his body shift, like he’s holding something back.
"I don’t think there are enough words to tell you how grateful I am for you," I whisper. "For everything you’ve done for my family. When you didn’t have to."
His hand twitches on the steering wheel. Then he reaches for mine, but halfway there, he hesitates. His fingers hover, barely brushing my skin, before dropping to the console like he changed his mind.
"You know I’d do anything for you, Ellie," he says.
I should tell him that’s not fair. That he doesn’t owe me that. That I don’t want him to build his whole life around holding mine up. But the truth is, for a second, I almost let myself lean into it. For a second, I wanted to.
Because I’m the reason he hasn’t left. The reason he’s still here, burying his own dreams beneath ours. He’s been using us—Jasper, Mom, and me—as a reason to stay in place. But I see it now. The way he wants more, even if he’s afraid to chase it.
And I’m terrified that coming home might have clipped his wings instead of helping him find them.
We arrive at the store and go through the motions. He grabs a cart. I toss groceries into it. We don’t speak, don’t make eye contact, don’t share a single smile. We just… move. Like two people who used to know each other, pretending not to.
It’s complicated. Messy. Strange.
But sometimes the right thing doesn’t feel clean. Sometimes, it just feels true.
And this—this hard, heavy moment—is mine to carry.
At checkout, I grab a bouquet of wildflowers. I don’t know why. Maybe because grief needs beauty, too.
I pay. Brooks bags the groceries. Still, no words.
We walk back to the truck like we’re both bracing for something, like if we move too quickly, we might crack apart.
I finally say, "Can we stop by the cemetery?"
He nods before I can add more. "They still haven’t gotten your dad’s headstone in yet."
"That’s okay." My voice catches. "I just want to say hi."
The drive is short, but it feels long. I roll my window down, let the late summer air spill in. It smells like rain-soaked soil and dying leaves. Like endings. Or maybe beginnings.
When we pull up, Brooks doesn’t wait. He steps out first and leads the way across the brittle grass, his gait slower than usual, reverent. I clutch the wildflowers against my chest like they might keep me from falling apart.
"Hi, Daddy," I whisper, kneeling in front of the tiny plastic marker with his name etched in flimsy letters. The earth is still raw here, the grass patchy and sparse. No stone yet. No permanence. Just absence.
I set the flowers down and run my fingers across the jagged blades of grass. It shouldn’t feel like this—temporary, forgotten. But death never waits for the details.
From the corner of my eye, I catch Brooks wiping a tear from his cheek. He turns away, giving me privacy.
"I came home," I say quietly. "I don’t know why I ever left. I just… couldn’t breathe here. And now I can’t breathe anywhere else."
My throat tightens and the rest of the words get stuck. There’s so much I want to tell him. About LA. About Brooks. About all the ways I failed and all the ways I tried. But none of it matters now.
Instead, I let the silence stretch between us, me and this man who raised me. Me and the grief that won’t let go.
And for once, I stop trying to fix it.
I just sit with it.
With him.
And let myself feel.
After a few minutes, I rise and wrap my arms around myself. I still can’t believe he’s gone.
Sometimes it feels like he’s just back at the house sitting in his recliner, half-watching a game, yelling at commercials.
But he’s not.
He’s not coming back.
And somehow, we have to learn to live around that absence. We have to build lives in the shape of what’s missing.
I came back because I thought I could rebuild this place. But maybe it’s not the house that needs fixing. Maybe it’s me.
Brooks places a hand gently on my shoulder, grounding me. I suck in a breath—shaky and raw—like I haven’t been breathing at all. But it comes. I breathe. Finally.
The drive home is quiet. My gaze stays locked out the windshield, but my thoughts scatter. I feel everything and nothing at the same time.
Maybe that’s normal.
Maybe that has to be normal now.
At the house, we put away groceries. Our elbows brush once at the counter.
"Sorry," Brooks mumbles.
I nod, even as my heart pinches at the contact.
God, I wish this didn’t have to be so hard. So awkward.
But it is. This is what normal looks like now. My new, fractured normal.
The screen door bangs open and Jasper stumbles in like a chaotic storm. Wren is right behind him, trying and failing to corral the mess.
"Is he drunk?" I ask, just as Jasper lifts a wobbly hand and points at me dramatically.
"Sister," he slurs, voice too loud for the quiet kitchen. "You’ve returned. Tell me, how was your long journey home?"
"We went to a baby shower for my sister," Wren quietly explains as Jasper trips over his own feet and crashes onto the couch. "He drank. A lot."
He buries his face in the throw pillows and lets out something between a groan and a laugh. My heart sinks a little more.
I never should have left.
"I have to…" Wren gestures toward the door, clearly reluctant to leave but equally helpless.
"We’ve got this," Brooks tells her, stepping in like he always does. "I’ll have him call you tomorrow."
Wren gives me a tight, sympathetic smile. "Good to see you, Elowen."
"You too," I murmur, watching her leave.
Then I turn to look at my brother, half-asleep and half-broken on the couch. And suddenly, all the weight I’ve been carrying settles even deeper.
This house doesn’t just need groceries.
It needs a whole new foundation.
After Jasper is cleaned up, put in bed, and monitored for what feels like forever, I slip out onto the porch and sink onto one of the old wooden steps.
The air smells like damp soil and honeysuckle.
Fireflies pulse gently across the yard like tiny lanterns, their light soft against the shroud of trees.
I feel him before I hear him. Brooks drops down beside me with a quiet grunt and hands me a beer.
Our fingers brush—just barely—but it’s enough to wake every nerve in my hand.
"What are we going to do about Jasper?" I ask, wrapping my hands around the bottle like it might tether me to something real.
Brooks takes a slow sip. "He’s hurting," he says. "So we support him. We let him know he’s not alone."
"And make sure he never goes to another one of Wren’s family events again," I murmur with a smirk.
Brooks chuckles, low and warm. The sound tugs something loose in my chest.
"I missed you," I whisper, the words small but weighty. I don’t say I’m still yours. I don’t say please don’t give up on me. But the wanting sits there between us, alive and breathing.
He glances sideways, beer halfway to his lips. "I missed you, too."
Silence falls again, but this time it throbs with something unsaid.
He takes another sip, then gently reaches for my hand, threading his fingers through mine. The contact is effortless. Familiar.
We sit like that, two people orbiting the same grief, staring up at a sky too vast to hold all the things we’ve lost.
I want to ask if he’s still waiting for me. If I even have the right to wonder.
But I don’t. Not yet.
So, I hold his hand a little tighter.
And let the fireflies light the dark.