When Kai and I were small we loved this section. We’d sneak into the kitchen, pull the book down, and stare at these pages with delighted fear. Descriptions of creatures that ate children, lured them into the forest, broke into their homes—sometimes men, sometimes wolflike, but always terrifying. There was a map of the country, faded with time, on which Grandma Dalia had drawn thick lines, defining the territories of the beasts: their world, laid atop ours.
Grandma Dalia would inevitably catch us. Her expression was always the same one she gave me and Kai when she found us mesmerized by the body of a dead cat on Seventh Street—horror and disgust. This is serious. This isn’t for play. You’d best learn to mind the beasts, or they’ll come for you.
Yet we’d always sneak into the kitchen again, stare at the pictures, and reenact the horrors described on the page in our play. We had to take turns playing the beast. Just seeing the images for the first time in a few years rushes memories back to me; Kai looks up at me and smiles a little.
“Maybe we can just tell these at the funeral. The world’s worst bedtime stories.”
I laugh a little at how inappropriate it would be. “Careful, Kai,” I say, trying to sound serious. “Mind the Snow Queen.” The Snow Queen doesn’t have a page full of scribbles and sketches like the other beasts do; her page is the blank one in the center of the book. I could never tell if Grandma Dalia didn’t know much about the beasts’ ruler or if she was just too afraid to write it all down.
Kai chuckles, raps his fingers against the book, and flips the page. “I can’t tell what she’d be madder about—how wrong it would be to use a scary bedtime story as her eulogy, or the fact that I’m telling everyone about the beasts. Though I guess she doesn’t need to worry about anyone thinking she’s crazy anymore. So… she’s got that going for her, at least.” The sadness is still in Kai’s voice, underneath the joke, but it feels good to hear him push it aside at least for a moment.
“And she doesn’t need to worry about the beasts, period,” I add.
“True. Though she was never really worried for herself. She was worried for me. Like the whole world was waiting to eat me up.” He rolls his eyes but then gets quiet. “I should have come back down when it was snowing, even if it got us in trouble. You know the snow was the worst for her. She must have been so scared for me. She probably died—”
“Knowing you were fine. She saw you before she died,” I cut him off. He swallows, and in the silence our eyes simultaneously wander to the window. How is it still snowing? It’s over a foot now, record-breaking, I think. When he looks back at me he smiles a little, though it seems as if the expression’s only purpose is keeping him from crying.
“It looks like it’s just me and you,” he says, and manages a small laugh. “You’re the only family I have now.”
I trail my hands down to his and smile as he lifts my palms to kiss them gently. Kai has felt like my only family for ages; I’m relieved that he sees me the same way now.
“You know I’m in love with you, right, Ginny?” He’s looking at my knuckles, running his thumb across them. His eyes flicker to mine. It’s the first time he’s said it aloud, or at least, aloud and meant it like this. “I’ve always been in love with you.”
“I know,” I whisper, and he smiles, leans forward, and kisses me. I lift out of my chair and move to him; he pulls me down into his lap and wraps his arms around me. My fingertips curl at the nape of his neck, and when we break away he finds my eyes and is silent for a long time. He exhales, reaches up, and tucks my hair behind my ears, letting his palm linger by my cheek.
I smile and say, “I’ll always—”
Love you, too. That’s the end of the phrase, but I don’t get to say it because someone is knocking at the door. Probably another well-wisher, hopefully bearing some sort of pie. Kai and I laugh at the timing as I hop off of him. He walks to the door and opens it slightly, just enough to see who it is.
“Oh, hi,” Kai says, sounding surprised. I lean forward, trying to see who’s there, but Kai blocks my view.
“Hi.” The voice is soft, gentle. “I was just stopping by—thought I’d see how things are going.”
“Wow,” Kai says, stuttering a little, as if he couldn’t find the word. “That’s so nice of you. Ginny?” He turns around and motions me over. When he does so, the door opens a little more, and I see the guest’s face. It’s Mora.
“Hey,” I say, smiling. “We didn’t really get to thank you the other day—sorry, we were in such a rush.”
“Of course,” she says, shaking her head. Her hair tumbles everywhere, looking metallic and glowy in the dim hall. She hands me an expensive-looking bouquet. “I wanted to come by and offer my condolences. I saw the obituary in the paper.”
“You didn’t have to,” Kai says.
“I wanted to,” Mora says, flashing her perfect grin. “Well, I’ll be—”
“No!” Kai says, sounding strangely panicked. “Don’t go. We were going to have dinner.” Mora looks hesitant, but Kai continues. “Join us? It’ll be my way of saying thanks for driving us.”
“I guess I can do that,” Mora says, shrugging. She walks into the kitchen and, without hesitation, drops her coat over the back of Kai’s chair, the one I was sitting in. I walk to the living room and pull in an ottoman for myself—there’s no way I’m sitting in Grandma Dalia’s chair, even now that she’s gone.
Grandma Dalia didn’t mind me going to the grocery store with her and Kai. It was one of the few places where I felt as if she didn’t hate me, I suspect because she liked having an extra pair of hands to stoop and grab things off the bottom shelf. She shuffled along the aisles, shouting out brands and, at the end, she’d get us both sugar cookies from the bakery.
One day in July, while Kai and I loaded the purchases into the back of the station wagon, I saw a man. Tall, dark hair, a perfectly trimmed haze of a beard. He was handsome, and it struck me that even though he had all the characteristics of a man, there was something strange about him, as if he were really just wearing a man costume. Still, he smiled at me, and I took a step toward him.
“Hi there,” he said, voice quiet. He was standing a few cars away from ours, his hands shoved into his pockets. “Want to come look at something I found?”