Free All Is Bright by Sarah Pekkanen

 
    I was rounding the corner of a grocery store when my cart almost collided with one coming the other way.
    “Sorry!” called a voice from my past.
    I froze, gripping the cold metal handle, as Griffin’s mother’s sweet, crisp voice conjured a series of memories that swept through my mind like flashcards: her giving me a lime-flavored lollipop and bandaging my skinned knee after I tripped on a rock during a game of tag in her backyard. The expression on her face—pure disappointment; so much more potent than anger—when she caught Grif and me sharing a Marlboro Light, purloined from his aunt’s purse, at the age of fifteen. The tears she didn’t try to hide the night of my senior prom as she snapped photos of her son and me, our dark straight hair, blue eyes, and the bright red of my dress and his cummerbund all forming a pleasing match.
    “Elise! What are you doing back in town?” Janice cried now as she hurried over in her parka and puffy down boots—a far more sensible ensemble for the Chicago winter than the Levi’s and brown leather boots I’d pulled on before my flight in from San Francisco. “Your dad and Clarissa are in . . . India, is it? Or could it be Iceland? They send postcards, but it’s hard to keep track! Does Griffin know you’re here?”
    Another Janice memory: Her questions tumbled over one another like socks in a spinning dryer. But the habit had always soothed me. Janice’s chatter wasn’t demanding; you could pick which questions you wanted to answer, and she’d skip ahead to new ones without backtracking over the ones you ignored.
    “Indonesia,” I said into her auburn-tinted hair, because her arms were wrapped around me. Janice always hugged like she meant it. “They’re in Jakarta right now. I came home because I didn’t want Nana to be alone on Christmas.”
    “Of course. How is your grandma? Your dad said her arthritis hasn’t worsened much, thank goodness. But you’re staying alone in that big old house?” Janice asked. Her eyes widened. “Unless you brought someone with you . . .”
    “Oh, no way,” I blurted. “I’m not seeing anyone.” That had come out wrong. “I mean, not that it’s
bad
to be dating already—I’m happy Grif is. Truly.”
    Smooth,
my inner critic threw into the conversation.
    “Did you just get in today? The house must be so chilly. And nothing in the fridge, of course, after all these weeks . . . If I’d known, I would have dropped off some milk and bread. But that’s what you’re taking care of right now, isn’t it?”
    I nodded. “I took the red eye in, ran into the house and blasted the heat, and headed straight back out for coffee and groceries. We were delayed on the runway for three hours and I sat next to a guy with a bad head cold. I’ve never been happier to walk off a plane in my life.”
    “Poor thing.” Janice reached out and rubbed circles on my back. I swallowed against the lump filling my throat. Janice was small and thin, with quick birdlike gestures, yet she managed to be all soft edges. How could I have imagined she’d hate me? I thought as her brown eyes smiled up at me.
    I hadn’t talked to Janice in more than eight months—since the night I sat next to Griffin in his bottle-green Jeep as we drove away from a sushi restaurant, tears staining both of our cheeks. Seeing Janice again made my heart constrict with the realization of how much I’d missed her. Not Grif—
her
. That encompassed the reasons why Grif had broken up with me, and why I hadn’t been able to end things with him long ago. The truth was, I was more afraid of losing his mom than of losing him.
    Griffin and I had dated on and off since our sophomore year of high school—taking a long break during college, and another, longer one when we were twenty-five. After we got back together for the final time, he moved to Los Angeles for a new sales job and I went along, hoping things might finally work out for us. But over a carafe of cold sake at