Page 9 of Something Like Shelter

Had my mom stopped by?

Or one of my aunts or cousins?

It was possible.

They all had keys and security code access. They could pop in and out whenever they wanted.

But my mom would have snuck in and stolen the baby so I could sleep. My aunts would have likely let me be but cleaned or cooked and left a note before they left. My cousins would have crashed on the couch to wait for me, knowing Adelaide never slept for long.

But there was no note.

No new food in the fridge.

No sign of anything other than clean dishes… and the samples spread across the dining table.

Had… Owen loaded the dishwasher before he’d left?

Maybe it was something that, a few months ago, would have really bothered me. I wouldn’t have liked it if someone’s actions made it appear like I couldn’t manage my own life.

This new me, who had been heavily leaning on her extended family for help? I just felt a little warm sensation in my chest as I turned on the electric kettle and made my way toward the dining table to look through my options as I waited for it to boil.

“Knock, knock,” a voice called a few minutes later, making me jerk out of my daze to find one of my cousins standing there.

“Gracie, hey,” I said, giving her a distracted smile.

Gracie wasn’t a cousin by blood but by the closeness of our mothers’ girls’ group. She was a pretty blonde with a warm smile, a floral romper, and arms full of reusable grocery store bags.

“I figured you were getting low,” she told me, waving the bags on her way to the kitchen.

“I was. I meant to order and just… forgot.”

“Well, now you don’t have to worry about half-rotten veggies or someone trying to substitute your toilet paper with aluminum foil. Don’t laugh. It happened to me,” she said.

I loved Gracie. She was bouncy and positive, someone who always felt like a ray of sunshine after a week of rain. But she was also my cousin who could always anticipate needs and remember preferences.

So I watched as she pulled out all the items I would have ordered myself and put them away in their exact right locations in the fridge.

“What are you looking at over there?”

“Tile samples mostly.”

“Tile?”

“My primary bathroom had a pipe burst.”

“Oh, my God. Why didn’t you tell someone? We could have come to help.”

“I called Owen to fix it.” Gracie closed the fridge and shot me a raised brow look, her eyes bright. “Don’t start,” I grumbled.

“It’s not my fault you somehow managed to pick the hottest handyman in the entire state to work on this deathtrap of a house.”

“Deathtrap is pushing it.”

“Money pit, then.”

“It is that,” I agreed, sighing.

I’d debated selling it in the early days. But once I started putting a lot of money into it, it felt like I’d be wasting money to move. I always kept thinking, What else could go wrong? A lot, apparently.