Page 75 of The Way We Swing Back

“Figured you’d want it right.”

She nodded. “Always.”

We ate mostly in silence. Gavin talked about a test that was coming up. Zach joked about skipping class for the third time this month. I listened, hands curled around my orange juice, the morning settling around me.

Finally, I was home. And I knew it. It was a family my mom would’ve liked. Even if I didn’t say her name around them.

After the dishes were washed and the kitchen fell back into silence, the house felt too still. I parked myself on the back deck with a cool glass of lemonade and the fading remains of a sunburn on the tops of my shoulders. The breakfast smell had long faded, replaced by the usual suburban quiet—kids yelling in the distance, a lawnmower a few houses over. I should have been at peace. But instead, there was still a hole waiting to be filled.

Behind me, the screen door creaked open. I didn’t turn.

“You okay?” Mrs. Quinn asked.

I nodded, though she hadn’t needed an answer. She knew I wasn’t. She stepped out onto the porch and sat in the chair next to me.

“You cooked like you were thinking about her,” she said after a minute.

“Yeah,” I said, eyes fixed on the grain of the railing. “I learned it all from her. Eggs, stews, how not to burn pancakes. Said it was the one thing no one could take away from me.”

“She sounds like a smart woman.”

“She was. She just... didn’t believe it herself most days.”

The wind tugged at a loose thread on my sleeve. I didn’t look over. Didn’t want to see pity in her eyes.

“I’ve never visited,” I said. “Not since the funeral. Not once.”

She didn’t gasp or offer a softly spoken, “Oh, Easton.” Instead, she let the words hang in the air. Then, as if she’d been waiting for me to ask but decided I never would, she said, “Want to go?”

Mom’s face circled me as I decided. “I think I’m ready.” I finally glanced over at Mrs. Quinn. She already had her keys in her hand.

The cemetery appeared smaller than I remembered. I guessed everything seemed bigger back when I was grieving and sixteen.

The gravel crackled under our shoes as we walked. The rows of stones stood neat and unbroken. It smelled of wet grass and death. I kept half-expecting it to be colder. Wasn’t that what grief was supposed to feel like? Cold? But the sun shone, warm and indifferent, like the world had the audacity to keep spinning.

I didn’t talk. She didn’t ask me to.

We stopped in front of the grave, and my breath caught when I read the words for the first time in three years.

ANNABELLE CHASE

LOVED DEEPLY. LOST QUIETLY.

“I picked that line,” I murmured. “The words. The stone was prepaid, so I didn’t get to choose much else.”

“She would’ve liked it,” Mrs. Quinn said.

“She would’ve hated it,” I said, a hollow laugh behind the words. “She’d say I was too sentimental.”

I crouched. Not all the way, but enough to touch the ceramic angel stuck into the dirt beside the grave. The paint had faded. A chip marked the edge of one wing, the broken pebbles long missing.

“I got her this,” I said. “From a gas station, believe it or not.”

“Sometimes the best gifts are the ones you buy on a whim.”

I brushed a leaf away from the foot of the stone. “She didn’t want me to know she was struggling. Not really. But she made sure I knew how to cook. Taught me how to clean up after myself. Do laundry. Plan meals. Little things, but all at once. Like she was handing me a manual for after.”

Mrs. Quinn crouched beside me. She didn’t touch the grave. Just watched. “You never have to explain her to me, Easton,” she said. “You carry her with you. Every time you cook, every time you don’t quit on someone. She’s there.”