Free Stolen Grace by Arianne Richmonde Page A

rims, twinkled in the glass-fronted cupboards. They too, wanted a promise. Don’t abandon us, we are part of you! She looked inside a drawer for an Advil, or something to lift away the burden; her head pounding with regret, guilt, love, sadness. The drawer, packed with a hundred pill prescriptions, including perhaps, the ones that killed her father, laughed at her.
    Where will you even start? You could put us all in a bag, dump us at the pharmacy (isn’t that what you’re meant to do with old fogies like us?) but we are a drop in the ocean, a speck of sand on a beach. What about the rest of the house—your mother’s country club clothes, your father’s suits, the silver, the candlesticks, your father’s ’68 Mustang in the garage, his diaries, golf clubs, photo albums, the letters, your essays from school, the boxes in the attic, the—
    “Stop!” Sylvia cried out. “Please, leave me alone! It’s all too much, all I want is to be home with Grace—”
    “But this is your home,” the paintings, the sofa-that-saved-her-life, the trophies and the ’68 Presidential Blue Mustang all said at once. “You can’t abandon us!”
    “Hello? Hell-oh-oh? Sylvia?”
    Sylvia’s heart missed a beat. Someone had let themselves through the front door, never locked, always open to friends—that was the way the neighborhood was.
    “Hello Syl-via? Are you ho-home?”
    It was the next-door neighbor, Mrs. Wicks, holding a large casserole dish. She looked just the same as she always had, squeezed into polyester pants, lemon-colored, paired with a tight blouse, her bra strap digging into the flesh in her back. She was one of those people who was always perky and kind, no matter the circumstance, no matter the weather. “I thought you might be hungry,” she purred, “and Lord knows with everything you have to do around here, I know the last thing you have is time for cooking.”
    “Oh Mrs. Wicks, you’re a saint! I was actually feeling ravenous and wondering where I could go to get a bite around here.”
    “Well isn’t that lucky I arrived in the nick of time? Where are Tommy and Grace?”
    “They’ll be here in a couple of days. I’m just about to call Gracie, actually.”
    “When’s the funeral, honey?”
    Sylvia gasped. “The funeral? I don’t know. I need to make a thousand phone calls. Speak to the funeral parlor. I guess I need to call everyone, too. Tell them Dad has died.”
    “Let them know he’s passed away?” Mrs. Wicks corrected. “Good idea, though most of his friends already know. I can make some more calls if you like.”
    Passed away. It was a word everybody insisted upon using these days. Nobody dared say the word “died” or “dead.” Some people didn’t even add on the “away” part, just, “he passed,” or “she passed.” But her dad was dead and making him “pass” didn’t make it any less painful.
    “Mrs. Wicks you’re an angel, thank you so much for your help,” Sylvia said, taking the dish. “Umm, this smells delicious.”
    “Pop it in the microwave for a few minutes. You know you can call me Marg. I’ll come back later, and remember, if you need me to do anything, anything at all, just say the word. Is Jacqueline coming today?”
    “I think today’s her day off.”
    “So she’ll still continue to work here?”
    Sylvia hadn’t thought that far ahead. Jacqueline had been with them forever. Sylvia’s forever, anyway. She loved that woman. She knew that she would probably be sitting at home, with swollen red eyes, devastated about the death of her boss, her working life now over. She should have retired long ago—she was too elderly to be pushing a vacuum cleaner about. But she didn’t want to retire, she’d said so a hundred times. To Sylvia, Jacqueline had never been a maid—she had been her lifeblood. Sylvia could keep her on a while longer, of course, but not indefinitely—she wouldn’t be able to afford it. But the idea of not having her in her life didn’t