It doesn’t matter that I’m sixteen, only days away from being old enough to drive and free to go where I want; I expect she’ll still be this protective of me when I’m fifty, and I can’t blame her. This time, she’s gnawing on a celery stick. It must be, for her and my dad, “health week;” once a month, after indulging in too many Ho Hos and Twix bars, she’ll go to Giant and pick up all the fixings for her own little farmers’ market. We’ll probably have something with tofu for dinner, but at this point, I’m glad. I ate three funnel cakes at Sweetie Pi’s while contemplating the Rubik’s Cube incident.It’s the same greeting she’s given me every day since Griffin died: “Hon, how’re you doing?” and a little shoulder rub. She swats a fly away from her face and crinkles her brow. She’s the only one who can ask me how I’m feeling until her face falls off and it doesn’t bother me. Maybe because I trust that she really does care about me. She really does want to hear the answer, good or bad.“Good,”
