Chapter 4 — What Carrying Everything Looked Like

Here is what the seven months had actually been made of, under the grief, in the hours no one saw.

Somebody had to buy the groceries, so I learned to buy the groceries — to plan a week of meals, to clip the coupons Evelyn had always clipped, to lug the bags in from the car.

Somebody had to keep the house running, so I taught myself the bills: the electric and the water and the mortgage and the terrifying stack of medical statements, which came in a language I had to learn from scratch, sitting at the kitchen desk late at night with the laptop glowing.

I set up a system, because a system was the only way I could keep the fear from swallowing me — a ledger, an actual paper ledger bound with a rubber band, where I wrote down every dollar that came in and every dollar that went out, every prescription, every co-pay, every appointment on Evelyn’s calendar.