Chương 1
"My mother tried to postpone the sale of my house while I was still wearing the black dress I had worn to bury my son.
The email sat open on my phone, four words glowing beneath her name.
Claire is in no condition.
For several seconds, I stood in the furnished Oakland studio with one hand still gripping the strap of my funeral shoes and listened to the refrigerator cycle on.
Evan's red sneakers waited beside the door.
His left shoe was tipped slightly onto its side because he never untied them properly, no matter how many times I complained.
I read my mother's email again.
She had told the buyers that grief had left me unable to make financial decisions and that she was authorized to arrange a delayed closing on my behalf.
She wasn't.
She had never been.
I called my real estate agent, Marisol Vega, back.
"Tell me exactly what they said."
"The buyers?"
"Everyone."
Marisol was quiet for half a beat.
She had the careful voice of someone carrying a glass filled too close to the rim.
"The buyers forwarded Linda's message to me because they were confused."
"Did they agree to anything?"
"No."
The answer came quickly enough that my shoulders dropped an inch.
"They're concerned, Claire, but they haven't agreed to postpone."
"Good."
"They also asked whether you're still legally able to close."
I sat down on the edge of Evan's bed.
It wasn't really his bed, just a narrow rental bed beneath a framed print of a sailboat, but he had slept there for seven months, which was long enough for my brain to reject any other owner.
"What did you tell them?"
"That you're my client and I take instructions from you."
"Thank you."
"Then I told them I would confirm everything directly with you."
I pressed my thumb against the seam of my dress.
Somewhere outside, a delivery truck backed up with three electronic beeps.
Life had been offensively ordinary all day.
People bought sandwiches while my son was being lowered into the ground.
Someone at the cemetery had complained about parking.
At a stoplight afterward, the man in the car beside mine had been singing.
"What happens if the house isn't vacant tomorrow?" I asked.
Marisol exhaled.
"Then we have a problem."
"How big?"
"Potentially expensive."
I almost laughed.
Expensive was a language I still understood.
Grief had no columns, no due dates, no amount due at the bottom, but expensive could be put on paper.
"The buyers have movers scheduled," she continued.
"They're also closing on their sale."
"So Mom can't just decide they should wait."
"No."
"Can I?"
Another pause.
"You can ask."
That wasn't what I had asked.
Marisol knew it.
"But you don't want me to."
"I want you to know what asking could trigger."
I stared at Evan's sneakers.
"Keep the closing."
"Claire."
"Keep it."
"Okay."
She didn't congratulate me on being strong.
For that alone, I could have loved her.
After we hung up, I opened the family group chat.
The last six messages were photographs from Maui.
Ryan holding a drink inside a hollowed pineapple.
Tessa posing beside an infinity pool.
Mom wearing sunglasses and a wide straw hat, one hand lifted against the sun.
Nobody had mentioned the funeral since Tessa asked me to save the recording.
I typed, I saw the email you sent the buyers.
Three dots appeared beneath Tessa's name almost immediately.
Then disappeared.
Mom called instead.
I watched her name fill the screen.
On the fifth ring, I answered.
"Claire."
Behind her voice came music and the indistinct noise of people talking.
"Where are you?"
"What?"
"I can barely hear you."
"We're having dinner."
Of course they were.
"I saw your email."
The noise on her end changed.
A chair scraped.
Then her voice came back quieter.
"I was trying to take something off your plate."
"You told the buyers you were authorized to speak for me."
"I told them you're grieving."
"You said I couldn't make decisions."
"I said you shouldn't have to."
"That's not the same thing."
"Claire, please don't turn this into something ugly."
I looked around the studio.
Evan's inhaler spacer was still on the counter beside a half-used roll of paper towels.
There was a cereal bowl in the drying rack that I had washed the morning we went to the hospital for the last time.
My mother was asking me not to make things ugly.
"Did you tell them you could stay until August?"
A silence.
"We need somewhere to live."
"You had sixty days."
"We've been dealing with a death."
"Evan died four days ago."
The words came out sharper than I intended.
"You had fifty-six days before that."
Mom inhaled.
For a moment, neither of us spoke.
When she answered, the softness was gone.
"Your sister's business collapsed."
"I know."
"Ryan has been applying everywhere."
"I know."
"And I am sixty-eight years old, Claire."
"I know how old you are."
"So where exactly do you expect us to go?"
I closed my eyes.
There it was.
Not a question about what the contract required.
Not a question about what I could afford.
A question about what I was going to do for them next.
"I sent you apartment listings."
"Those rents are ridiculous."
"I offered the deposit on the one in Citrus Heights."
"Tessa didn't like it."
"It had two bedrooms."
"It was depressing."
I opened my eyes.
"Evan died in a hospital room with cartoon planets painted on the ceiling."
Mom said nothing.
"I don't care if Tessa finds an apartment depressing."
"That was cruel."
"Yes."
I surprised myself by agreeing.
It had been cruel.
I also didn't take it back.
Mom's voice trembled slightly when she spoke again.
"You aren't yourself."
That sentence landed differently after the email.
Maybe she heard it too, because she hurried on.
"I mean emotionally."
"Do not use my grief to disqualify me from my own decisions."
May you like
"No one is disqualifying you."
"You contacted my buyers."
