She bends her knees like I do, then grips the bottom of the box.
“One, two, three,” I say, then grunt as I lift that motherfucker of a safe.
“FuckinghellhurryupI’mdying,” Keira mutters, face red as we make tiny steps to the side until we push the damn thing to the lip of the trunk and let it fall backward. The loud boom it makes doesn’t even cover up the animalistic sounds we release.
“Thank you so much,” the lady tells me, then hands me twenty bucks and leaves. Talk about cheap labor.
“I just peed myself.”
“What?”
Keira’s staring at what is indeed a wet spot on her khaki shorts. “I just fucking peed myself.”
“Are you sure you haven’t broken your water?”
“Cassie, Jesus Christ, I can still tell when I’ve peed all over myself. Now help me before someone notices I smell like cat litter.”
“All right, all right. I’ll be back.”
I run to the house, but as soon as I open the drawer where I stored my clothes, I know nothing of mine will fit her with this belly. I pull out various items before throwing them over my shoulders. Finally, I land on a beach coverup that canbe tied multiple ways. That will have to do as a skirt. I rush back outside, breathless as I hand her the thin piece of fabric.
“Seriously?”
“It’s not like I had a ton of options,” I say, hands on my knees.
She huffs and puffs as she wraps the Hawaiian flower-patterned coverup around her belly and hips, then bends so she can pull off the wet shorts and throws them somewhere we can’t see.
She looks down at herself once more. “This is what rock bottom feels like, huh?”
“See the bright side. You could’ve shit yourself.”
And suddenly, we’re both laughing, in a way I’m afraid I’m going to pee my pants and she’s going tore-pee her pants if this goes on any longer. Keira walks back to her chair, then falls back in it a tad too abruptly. The coverup/skirt parts and she unexpectedly flashes me, which only makes us laugh harder. I drop to the ground because my stomach hurts too much, and I don’t think I can stand a second longer. I don’t remember the last time I laughed this hard, and most importantly, the last time I laughed with my sister. It’s magical. Every time one of us sighs and thinks we’re done, one giggles, and we’re gone again. A car slows at some point, but once the driver sees us, they speed away.
When we finally catch our breath, I look up at Keira, whose cheeks are as wet as mine. She smiles, and it feels as close to a hug as anything I’ve ever gotten from her. I want to bask in this moment.
To our left, the kids previously playing in their pool now run around the front yard with water guns, their loud shrieks the embodiment of what summer feels like.
“For the record,” Keira says, “you would’ve made a great mother.”
“I know.” And somehow, I’m not sad at all, because hearing those words coming out of her mouth heals a part of my heart I hadn’t even realized was broken.
At 6:00 p.m., we called it a day, and Eli came over to help us pack into boxes whatever hadn’t been bought to be brought to Goodwill tomorrow. He then invited the two of us to dinner with him, Zoe, and Xavier, who he’d babysat all day.
We haven’t spent any time together since that moment on his couch, and I’m grateful for Keira and the kids being buffers tonight. I don’t trust myself around him anymore. When he briefly touched my arm before he left to get dinner ready, I caught Keira watching the scene, and I waited for a berating that in the end never came.
“Well,” I say as I finish my second counting of the money, “we made a grand total of 373 bucks.”
“For all that work?” Keira says, and I have to agree with her. I almost feel like having written out a check for that sum of money would’ve been worth it just to not have to go through all that work. At the same time, today was a great day. Maybe that was the actual pay.
I hand her the bills. “I won’t tell if you won’t.”
She eyes the money, then shakes her head. “Nah. We’re doing this right, or we’re not doing this at all.”
I shrug, then put the money in my purse. I’ll make a check for the heart failure foundation once I get home tonight.
I close the last of the boxes, then grab it and follow Keira back to Ruth’s.
“I can’t believe it’s almost the end,” I say, taking in the newly cleaned windows and the flowerbeds I brought back to life, at least partly. Soon, I’ll never see that house again. My refuge for so long.
