Ayida asks a week later, during breakfast. She looks haggard. None of us have slept too well recently. Me due to seeing those eyes every time I close my own. My mother because she wouldn’t leave my side. My father because he hasn’t had her by his. Gran . . . well, she hardly sleeps anyway. I think I have an inkling why: old people know their time is short and don’t want to waste it sleeping. The best sleep I got was yesterday afternoon when Joe came over, sat silently next to me, and held my hand until I drifted off. When I woke, he was gone. “I want to trust you,” my mom ventures. Her eyes bear no trust. Especially since my newly appointed psychiatrist, Dr. Collier, casually tossed around terms like mental disorders, psychosis, phobias. Now those words lie scattered on the floor around me like grenades, and we wait for Dr. Collier to pick one up and lob it at us. Gingerly I take her warm hand. “I want to be trusted again. Go. It’ll be all right.” My stomach protests at the thought of being alone with my grandmother for a few hours.
