The Beginning of After

feel my throat close up and a bolt of something hot and sharp behind my eyes. For the love of God , I thought, please don’t start crying here . And then I saw something in my head. A bright place with a window and a soft bed that sat empty as wasted space on the planet.
    Toby’s bedroom.
    “I can take her,” I said, before I could think of the many reasons not to.
    Eve put both hands on my shoulders, smiling wider than I thought her face had room for. “You CAN?”
    I just nodded, looking at my palms. “I have room,” I said after a few seconds. “I have plenty of room.”
    “Laurel, how can you do something like this without asking my permission first?” said Nana as we stood in the living room, a cardboard box full of cats at my feet. She was angry, her mouth pursed and her frown lines making cracks in her carefully applied makeup. I’d almost forgotten what that looked like.
    “I didn’t think you’d mind,” I said, shrugging, not looking at her.
    “Well, I do mind, but that’s beside the point. This is my house too now, and I’m in charge, and if you want to bring in some homeless animals to live in your brother’s . . .” She stopped as the word stuck in her throat, and turned away from me, finally spitting out, “Your brother’s room . . . we have to talk about it.”
    “I’m sorry,” I said. “Why don’t you take your trip upstate, like you’ve been planning? That way you won’t have to deal with it.”
    “I don’t feel like going right now. Don’t change the subject, Laurel.”
    She looked at me, her anger giving way to what seemed like confusion, like she was wishing she had a handbook she could check to figure out what to do in this situation.
    “It was just something I needed to do.” I thought of the cat’s expression, imagined her alone in the empty apartment she knew as her home, wondering what she’d done wrong.
    Nana saw that I was about to break down, but held her mouth in a firm line. “I understand that, and I think I understand why. I just wish you’d remember that you’re not the only one trying to figure out how to get through.”
    Now that firm line fell apart, and she reached out to me. “I lost them too, you know,” she said shakily.
    I stepped into her and felt her arms grow tight around me, her crisp plaid blouse pressing against my chest. It was a place I didn’t realize I wanted so badly to be.
    Neither of us said anything for a little while. I pictured the kitty in the box, listening to all this, thinking, I’m not sure this is going to be any better than the animal hospital .
    Finally Nana took a deep breath, stood back, and said, “Okay, but you feed them, you clean up after them. And you find them homes as soon as you possibly can.”
    I just nodded, and decided I would call my mama foster cat Lucky.

Chapter Twenty-one

    O ne week before my birthday and two weeks before Halloween, the leaves hit their peak. I could stand on our front lawn and look south to see the quilt of browns and reds and yellows stretched across the hills. It was hard for me to drive because I’d always be staring up at the trees, which bent forward over the road like they were showing off their last bling of the season before going bare for the winter.
    The memories hit me hard, squeezing my chest, every time I stepped outside and felt that snap in the air, the fall food smells drifting through our neighborhood. My dad and Toby and I raking the lawn, then jumping into the leaves. Mom and I shopping for sweaters and corduroys at the outlet mall. All four of us driving up north to go apple picking early on a Saturday morning. I’d always loved October because it moved things along, it kicked our butts into shifting gear. But now that things were moving along without them, it just made me cry a lot.
    “Birthdays and holidays are very difficult when you’re grieving, especially the first year,” said Suzie during our latest session. “It’s going to be a tough few months that way.”
    “I know,” was all I said, playing with a loose button on my sweater.
    “How’s your college application coming along?” she asked. “You only have a couple weeks left to submit to Yale, right?”
    “I’m almost done,” I replied, glad to change the subject. I thought my application was pretty good. Or at least, good enough for my dad. I even had photos of my best set paintings over the years. They were photos Mom had taken, which at the time had seemed too