Cappuccinos, Cupcakes, and a Corpse by Harper Lin

Author:Harper Lin [Lin, Harper]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harper Lin Books
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 12

I knew I was tired, but I didn’t feel like going to bed yet. I went into the kitchen and poured myself a glass of wine. The house was quiet. So very, very quiet. I wandered through the first floor, flipping lights on as I went. The lights made the stillness feel a little less ominous.

I opened the door to my grandparents’ bedroom. I had never thought of my mother as a particularly sentimental person, but I supposed she had been since she’d never moved into their bedroom after they both passed away. She hadn’t really cleaned it out. Their clothes were still hanging neatly in the closet, their knickknacks still arranged on the dresser.

I picked up a bottle of my grandmother’s perfume and sprayed it in the air. Even after all these years, it still smelled just like her. My grandfather’s cologne was the same way. I sat on the edge of their bed, closed my eyes, and breathed them in. On the one hand, it felt as if they had just died a minute ago, but on the other, I felt every one of the eleven years since their passing. They’d died within months of each other, my grandmother from a quick-moving pancreatic cancer and my grandfather from heart failure in his sleep. Losing them in such quick succession had been hard on my mother and me, but my grandfather hadn’t been the same since my grandmother’s passing, and we knew he was ready to be with her again.

I opened my eyes and looked around the room. Maybe I should move down there. Clean out their things, give it a fresh coat of paint. There was no sense in leaving it as a museum or treating the whole house as if it were frozen in time, a tomb for ghosts to lurk about in. I supposed that meant I’d need to go through my mother’s things as well. Maybe I should go through the whole house. Spruce it up some, “young” it up, make it a place that a thirty-something single woman would live in. That sounded like a plan. Although the house still seemed dreadfully quiet. Maybe I needed a pet. A dog or a cat. Despite all of my grandfather’s wonderful traits, he had adamantly refused to allow a pet in the house, no matter how much I’d begged and pleaded. But there was no reason I had to keep it “people only” anymore. If I wanted a pet, I could get a pet. It wasn’t as though I had a job that kept me away for long hours each day—I could arrange my schedule at the café however I needed to so that I could come home to take care of Fido or Fluffy. That settled it. I was getting a pet. I would go to the shelter to find the perfect critter to love just as soon as I could.

I went upstairs and got ready for bed. I lay down and thought about what I would turn this room into when I moved downstairs into the master bedroom.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.