Page 81 of Zero Chance

Waving a dismissive hand, Gram rolled her eyes.“Oh, nothing.Just Christmas decorations that’re ready to go up into the attic.Donny said he’d get to them, but his knees have been acting up again, so?—”

“I can take them up,” I offered, already hefting all three boxes into my arms and propping them on one shoulder.

“Oh, honey.You don’t have to do that.Your grandfather will?—”

“I don’t mind,” I said and started into the hall so I could find the pull-down string that opened the trapdoor.

When I was a kid, I used to love going into the attic and snooping through all the old boxes.Rifling through my mom’s stuff had been my favorite.There was a homemade card she’d made in the third grade with macaroni pasted around the edges.Inside she’d said something along the lines of not understanding why her teacher had forced her to glue food to paper to give to her mother as a present, but she was doing it anyway to get a good grade.

My mother had been so unusual.

I’d loved the shit out of her.

Below me, Gram was pressing both hands to her chest as she cooed, “Well, aren’t you just the sweetest?I don’t know what we’d do without our Keene.”

I didn’t answer, too busy grunting as the weight shifted on my shoulder, and I started to climb.But I made it up without a mishap and was setting the boxes down in a bare space where I knew the Christmas shit went.

On my way back to the ladder, I glanced toward my mom’s boxes and wondered not for the first time if I should tell Gram and Pop-Pop that their daughter’s ghost was haunting the university library.

The thing was, they’d already grieved that loss and said their goodbyes.It just felt as if I’d be dragging them through that pain all over again if I told them she was still around.Because Iwasgoing to figure out a way to help my mother move on.No matter how much I didn’t want her to leave me again, I knew she had to.Eventually.She wasn’t supposed to be stuck in our world with no physical body.

So I’d decided not to tell her parents about her to keep them from suffering the way I knew I would when she left again.

The only time I’d ever seen my grandfather cry was at her funeral.

Thinking about him, I asked, “Where is Pop-Pop, anyway?”as I climbed back down the ladder.

“Oh, he got called into the factory because the evening supervisor quit without any warning.”

“Again?”I sent her a dismayed glance as I refolded the ladder and pushed it back into the ceiling.

Gram rolled her eyes.“Oh, I know.Just four more years until retirement, though.We’ve been counting down the days.”Thrusting my laundry basket at me that she must’ve fetched while I was in the attic, she added, “Here.You might as well take these with you now since I’m done.It’ll save you from having to come back again tomorrow.”

“What?You’re done already.”Shaking my head, I lifted the basket from her arms.“Gram, you’re seriously too good to me.”

“Well, someone should be,” she grumbled with a roll of her eyes.“ThatCynthiacertainly never cleaned the grass stains off the knees of your jeans right.”

I grinned, amused by how she and Nana werestillfeuding after all these years.“Nana tries her best, Gram.”

Gram sniffed in disagreement.Nodding her head toward my basket, she noted, “I don’t have to clean nearly as many socks for you since you moved out.You must be masturbating less.”

Used to my grandmother’s blunt and way-too-personal line of questioning, I shrugged.“That’s because I’ve been having indiscriminate sex with loads of hot girls across campus instead.”

Narrowing her eyes with disapproval, Gram merely lifted her nose and primly responded, “Well, as long as you’re using the proper protection.”

“Always, Gram.”I pressed a solemn hand to my chest.“I’m not my no-account, good-for-nothing, loser of a father, I promise you.”

Nodding as if that made everything better, she demurred, “Of course, you’re not.I raised you better than that.”

“Yes, you did,” I agreed, vaguely wondering what the no-account, good-for-nothing loser was up to these days.

I hadn’t seen him since—shit.I think Nana had made him come around for my high school graduation.It’d been a week after the fact when he finally made an appearance, but he’d actually given me a card with twenty bucks in it.Of course, he’d taken off about two minutes after showing up, but that had been over a year and a half ago.I hadn’t seen hide nor hair of him since then.

I’d tried calling him this past summer when Grandpa had gone into the hospital for an emergency surgery to get some gallstones removed, but the number I had for him had been disconnected.

Oh well.His loss.

Gram and I talked for another ten or fifteen minutes before I headed out, carrying my laundry basket to the Jeep.

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