Page 157 of That Rush

“Do you remember where?”

“At the top.” Josie lifts one hand toward her crown. “She made little pieces first, and then they went under. Or over.”

Paige stops with the braid half formed. “Do you want me to undo it?”

“I don’t know.”

The last word wobbles.

I push away from the counter.

Josie stares at herself in the window, her eyebrows drawing together. “Mommy sang when she did it.”

“What did she sing?” I ask.

“I don’t remember.”

Her lower lip trembles.

“That’s okay, baby.”

“No, it isn’t.” She grabs at the end of the loose braid, and Paige immediately lets go so it doesn’t pull. “I used to know. She did my hair every day, and now I can’t remember the song.”

Tears run down her cheeks, hot and fast. I crouch beside the chair, but she slides down as I reach for her and climbs into my arms.

I settle on the kitchen floor with her in my lap. Her hair spills across my forearm as she presses her face into my neck.

“I can’t hear her,” she cries. “I know how Mommy talked, but when I try, it sounds wrong.”

It’s hard to draw a full breath. I know exactly what she means. I can remember Krista’s words, yet some days the sound of her laugh feels farther away than it did the day before.

The clock over the stove advances another minute.

I stop looking at it.

“I wish you could hear her whenever you wanted,” I say, rubbing my palm over Josie’s back.

“What if I forget all of it?”

My first instinct is to promise she won’t. I want to give her certainty because fear is easier to manage when I can turn it into a problem with an answer.

I can’t promise her which details grief will let her keep.

“You’re scared,” I say.

She nods against my neck.

“I am too.”

Her arms tighten around me.

Behind us, Paige picks up my phone and silences the tutorial. She doesn’t offer to finish the braid or suggest another hairstyle. When I glance up, she is standing beside the table, her mouth set in a quiet line of worry.

“You should go,” I tell her. “We may not make it tonight.”

“I’m eleven minutes early,” she says. “I have some time.”

There is no pressure in her voice and no attempt to make Josie look at her. Paige lowers herself to the floor a few feet away, folding her dress beneath her knees.