Page 22 of Into the Mountains
Avery just shrugs, “Yeah, but saying you wish for a heart attack is a little bit different.”
I hang my head back and let myself stare at the ceiling for a full minute until Fran calls our names for our drinks.
Avery thanks her as she takes the carrier and carefully transports it to the car. Before Fran turns away, I get her attention.
“I’m sorry, Fran.”
She genuinely looks confused. “For before. Joking about wishing for a heart attack. I didn’t know.”
I expect her to look sad or tear up, but instead she just chuckles. “Who would expect you to know, honey? It’s been a long time. Henry wouldn’t want me to still be sad. Hell, he didn’t want me to ever be sad about it.”
“Really?”
Propping her arms on the counter, she promptly ignores the rest of the line and lets her other employees tackle it. “He would always tell me that if he went first, I better not waste a second being sad. That I have too much life to live and love to give other people to be hung up on losing him.”
“Did you listen to him?”
“Oh, hell no.” We both laugh. I like her frankness. “At least, not at first. I allowed myself time to grieve. It’s good for the heart. And when I felt I was ready, I listened to him.”
“Are you happy that you did?”
Quiet, she tilts her head to the side as if contemplating her answer. “Sometimes, I wish I would have given myself more time. But there are days I feel it harder than others and on those days, I just let myself feel it.”
“And the next day?”
“I get back to it like he wanted me to.”
“So, you didn’t listen to him fully?”
“Life is all about balance, sweetheart.”
Coffees in hand, and one smoothie, I balance them with my bags swinging from my shoulders and manage to ring the doorbell. After a few minutes of not hearing anything from inside I try to ring it again. Nothing. I know I have the time right. I know because I remember grumbling about it when I couldn’t sleep last night at 3:00 a.m. and I was calculating how many hours I could get if I fell asleep right then. It was four hours. But I didn’t fall asleep until 4:00 a.m., so I’m only running on three hours of sleep, hence the massive amount of espresso I’m about to consume.
There’s still no movement from inside so I decide to just kick the bottom of the door. The computer bag hanging from my shoulder, coffees in hand, and bags of materials currently digging into my forearm make it more difficult to move my arms. My foot seemed the easier option.
“Dad, Charlotte’s here!” I stifle a laugh at the fact that this kid is up so early on a Saturday morning. I was always desperate for extra sleep on the weekends and if I couldn’t sleep, cartoons were always there to keep me company. So I’m surprised again when Ethan answers the door and I am met with a quiet ambience of the house. Even though they just moved a few days ago, I expected the bigger items to be connected. Instead the T.V. is off to the side, surrounded by boxes labeledlivingroomin black marker.
“And she brought coffee!” Remembering the kitten, I look down before I walk through the door so I don’t trip over her or accidentally allow her to escape through the door. Ethan notices and plucks Sable from the floor as she meows in protest.
“Thank god,” Elias groans. He’s in the kitchen straight ahead behind the island, a box opened on the counter with a few empty ones discarded on the floor. “I’ve been looking for the coffee maker for the past hour and I can’t find it. It was the last thing to be packed up and somehow it got buried.”
“Well, I forced Avery to come get coffee with me because I got no sleep as usual, and she insisted I get you a coffee. I brought Ethan a smoothie too. I hope that’s okay.”
“How’d you know what I like?” Ethan asks, lacing his voice with extra suspicion.
“Dwarf magic,” I joke.
“That’s not how dwarf magic works,” he says, seriously.
“You’ll have to explain it to me later after your grumpy old dad and I are done working.” His eyes light up at the idea.
“Really?” He sounds almost unsure that I meant it and to my surprise, I did mean it. I may have stayed away from that world for years, but it might be nice to ease my way back into it with a friend. Even if it’s a friend almost a fourth of my age.
“As long as it’s okay with your dad, then yeah. I’d love to.”
Elias walks over, grabbing one of the coffees. It’s mine, but I don’t warn him. Something tells me he isn’t the type of person to get five extra shots of espresso in his lattes and I want to see what happens when he takes a sip.
For research purposes, obviously.
