Page 80 of A Thousand Little Goodbyes

“Let me do this for you, Chrissie. For you…and for her.”

Chrissie nodded and slipped out from under the covers. She didn’t trust herself to speak, but as she headed for the door to get dressed and introduce her daughter to her birth mother for both the first and last time, she did sneak a peek back at the bed.

Scarlett held the photo in her hand, a smile hovering on the corner of her lips as she traced the shape of the three of them. Chrissie couldn’t help thinking that it was just like her to be the first to see what the next world had to offer. Scarlett had always been the ringleader, the trailblazer, the one who forced Chrissie to confront a world that terrified her more often than it didn’t.

Of course she’d be the first to leave, to return to her grandmother’s arms. To step into the unknown and make sure there was something amazing waiting when Chrissie finally joined her.

* * *

“I don’t understand. Why are you being so weird?”

Chrissie had been striving to be asun-weird as possible as she led Kat into the cabin and directed her toward Scarlett’s room, but she’d clearly missed a step somewhere.

“I’m not being weird. I’m being honest. Aunt Scarlett isn’t doing well today, and she has a few things she wants to talk to you about before she… You know. Before tomorrow.”

Kat reared to a halt in the middle of the living room. She was dressed in jeans and close-toed shoes, her hair pulled back in a long ponytail. Both she and Lily had been awake and sipping energy drinks when Chrissie had arrived, the pair of them looking surprisingly spryfor the hour of morning—a circumstance she soon learned was due to their determination to reach the stables for a morning’s ride before the horses got too tired.

“What kind of things?” Kat asked. “Is she going to yell at me some more about you and Coach? Because I’m not changing my mind. I think it’s wrong on every possible level.”

“Kat.”

Her daughter flushed. “What? I’m allowed to have my own opinions. You guys being old doesn’t make you right about everything.”

“No, but Scarlett dying does give her a perspective that neither you nor I could possibly understand. So maybe give her the benefit of the doubt, yeah?”

The flush seeped to Kat’s ears, and she lost some of the belligerence in her bearing. “It’s not fair. I love Scarlett, but she’s basically weaponized her cancer. She’s holding us hostage here.”

Chrissie laughed—not because what Kat said was funny, but because it was the most selfish and Scarlett-like thing she could possibly say.

“How do you thinkIfeel? She’s been holding me hostage my whole life.”

Kat slumped her shoulders and started to head to the bedroom, but Chrissie called out before she made it more than a few steps. “No—wait.”

Kat stopped and turned, her eyebrows lifted in surprise. Chrissie ached with the urge to pull her daughter into her arms one last time before the bomb dropped, but she wasn’t sure if it was a good idea. The Kat who was entering the bedroom wasn’t the same Kat who would walk out of it, and she was terrified of the results.

In her own girlhood, she’d often dreamed of what it would be like to learn that her parents weren’t really her parents—that she’d been switched at birth or dropped off by a poor but loving mother who’dseen the big house and assumed the people inside would take good care of her. Kat wasn’t wrong when she said her life was worse because of the isolation of it.

She needed to know that more than just one person loved her. Shedeservedmore.

“What?” Kat demanded. She crossed her arms over her chest. “What did I do now?”

“Nothing. I just…” Chrissie tried not to let her voice wobble, but wobble it did. “I love you, honey. No matter what happens, I want you to remember that. You’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me, and nothing can change that.”

Kat looked understandably confused—and concerned—by this, but all she did was roll her eyes.

“Whatever. Don’t let Lily go to the stables without me, okay? If I don’t keep an eye on her, she’ll take Shadowfox out before I have a chance to call dibs.”

Chrissie nodded, not trusting herself to speak. As the door snicked open and closed again, Kat’s soft voice calling, “Aunt Scarlett?” before it was cut off entirely, she wasn’t sure she’d ever be able to speak again.

But first thirty seconds ticked by…then thirty seconds more. Just when she was considering pacing the floor like a caged animal or at least finding a dust rag and working out her anxiety that way, a knock sounded at the front door. She practically ran to answer it.

“Hey, Ms. Thomas.” Lily stood on the other side, looking even more ready for the stables in a flannel shirt and dark wash jeans, her braids pulled back underneath a baseball cap. She held a wax-paper bundle in one hand that smelled suspiciously like sausage. “My dad wanted me to bring this over for you. He made breakfast burritos. He was afraid you’d be too preoccupied this morning to remember to eat.”

“Oh.” Chrissie blinked down at the bundle. “That’s really sweet, but he didn’t have to do that.”

Lily rolled her eyes in an exact imitation of Kat. “He can’t help himself. Cooking is his way of showing he cares. He’s like an old-timey grandma who thinks everyone around him is about to collapse from hunger. It used to drive my mom crazy. Every time they had a fight, he’d spend like six hours making her favorite dinner to apologize.”

Chrissie couldn’t help but smile as she accepted the gift.