Page 25 of Ladybirds

She doesn’t think about Seth; doesn’t think about the emotion in his eyes the split second before he blinked away. She doesn’t think about anything. Flashing the turn signal, merging onto the freeway, it’s all done with a numbness that makes her feel more machine than human.

That’s ok, though. Right now, she would rather feel the clicking of gears than the pain in her chest.

It’s an hour’s drive, but it somehow manages to feel twice as long. Sara doesn’t remember any of it; just a blur of asphalt and cornfields. She’s on autopilot until the exact moment when she pulls into the hospital parking lot, and all the emotions she repressed on the drive hits her with a force that leaves her gasping.

Still, she makes it to Oma’s room—a mess of tears and heartache. The staff gives her soft, pitying glances as she passes while simultaneously trying to avoid eye contact so they can continue doing their jobs.

It’s like David all over again, but worse (so, so much worse). There is no hope hiding away in the corners of her heart, no promise of ‘maybe’. Oma is dying. Soon she’ll be gone.

Oma’s hand pats her cheek, fragile and weathered. “It’s ok, sweet girl. I’ve made my peace.”

The tears come faster. Harder. Sara chokes on a sob, snot running down her throat. Oma shushes her softly, but the sound doesn’t soothe the break. Not this time. “I don’t want you to go,” she whimpers, grasping at her grandmother’s hand. She hates how cold it feels against her palm.

“I know,” Oma whispers between a rattling breath, “I know.”

Sara shakes her head, eyes burning. “There has to be something they can do,” she hiccups. “There has to be.”

Oma softens, voice strong in a way her body isn’t—level in a way that makes Sara’s break. “Some things just are,” she says, hand reaching up to stroke her granddaughter’s hair. “I’ve had a good life.”

But you should have more, Sara wants to scream. You should have longer. But she can’t bring herself to say the words, because there is no fear hiding behind her grandmother’s blue eyes—no regrets.

Oma smiles, cool hands reaching up to cup Sara’s tear flushed cheeks. “Listen to me, sweet girl. When the time comes, you’ll need to speak to Janice. She’s the executor of my will. She’ll make sure everything is taken care of. Do you understand?”

Sara does, but she doesn’t want to. “But—”

“Sara,” she chastises, and for a moment she looks so much like the grandmother Sara remembers—scolding her for stealing an extra cookie from the jar or trying to fib her way out of finishing her homework. “Do you understand?”

The words won’t come—they’re lodged like a knife between her heart and her throat—so, around another hiccuping sob, Sara nods.

With patient hands, Oma guides her closer until her face is buried in the crook of her neck—her grandmother’s fragile arms wrapped around her. Despite her weakness, her hold is strong; a tether in the storm. A lifeline. Sara’s terrified of what will become of her once it snaps.

“I know it’s hard, and I know it hurts, but all things heal. Even the heart.” Oma presses a kiss to her temple, her words a whispered promise against her skin. “I’m ready and, in the end, that is the most any of us can hope for.”

Two days later, Sara leaves Oma’s side to grab breakfast from the hospital cafeteria. She’s not gone long (fifteen minutes at most) but when she comes back, the bran muffin she ate weighs like a stone. There are too many nurses going in and out of Oma’s room, and when she catches one of their eyes, Sara knows. She knows that she missed that last goodbye, traded it away for a crappy muffin that Oma could have made ten times better with less.

The nurse consoles her, hand rubbing practiced circles on her back as she explains that sometimes this is what happens. Sometimes the dying wait until there is no one to watch them go; no one to be haunted by the sound of that final, rasping breath.

Maybe it’s true. If it is, Sara finds no comfort in it. She cries until it hurts, until someone comes to take Oma—no. Not Oma. Oma’s gone. It’s just her body (a body, the deceased own nothing). It feels like only minutes, but she knows it must have been at least an hour before they wheel it away to the morgue in the basement. Sara tries not to think of the steel wall of refrigerated, temporary graves—tries not to think of how her grandmother’s face is among its patrons—but it presses against the lids of her eyes; a horrible vision she can’t shake.

One of the nurses, the one that soothed her while she sobbed, asks if Oma had any family she can call. Anyone she can grieve with.

Sara thinks of the red sedan that drove away and never returned; thinks of the daughter at the wheel. She could find her—she knows she could, if she really tried. Her mother would want to come for the service at least, wouldn’t she?

Shouldn’t she?

Sara wasn’t the only one abandoned when her mother left. Oma hadn’t heard from her since she drove off. Sara frowns.

“No,” she says, voice hoarse. “No other family.”

Her mother should be there, she should know, but that doesn’t mean she deserves to. She lost that right the moment she walked away without ever bothering to look back.

On the way home, halfway into her drive, she stops by a tattoo shop. The bell rings over her head, a tauntingly merry chime, and she grits her teeth to quell the tears.

The woman behind the counter takes one look at her, eyes softening in pity. Dark hair is swept into a ponytail, the colorful sea of floral ink decorating her arms and neck on full display. “Lose someone?”

Sara nods, voice too raspy to be trusted by itself. “My grandmother.”

The artist nods, her smile sweet and knowing. Sara wonders how many others have walked through that same door, listened to that same taunting chime, while carrying the same ache in their heart. “Come on back and we’ll set you up, honey.”

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