The Bones of You Read Online Free PDF Page B

freshened by the cool of the night and the dew. But this morning, I don’t see the rose that’s bursting into bloom, just as I breathe the lavender without savoring its warm fragrance and pick the last of the raspberries without tasting them.
    Yesterday I’d have called Jo—to see if she’d heard anything. But in this changed world, I don’t. It feels too intrusive. Instead, my thoughts turn to Grace and her friends, reeling from the realization that even this close to home, no one’s invincible.
    “I should have done something, Mummy. . . . I should have been nicer, been her friend. . . .”
    Her childhood name for me, her hysteria—partly tiredness but heartfelt—is completely understandable. But not her guilt.
    “It’s not your fault, Grace. Even if you’d been friends, it doesn’t mean you could have stopped it.”
    “She doesn’t deserve this, Mum. . . . She never did anything wrong. . . .” Past and present are muddled as she navigates unfamiliar territory.
    “I know she didn’t.”
    All I can do is hold my daughter’s sobbing body, grateful with every fiber of my being that I still have her, can still touch her, hear her voice. That it wasn’t Grace who disappeared, that I’m not Jo, whose world has been decimated.
    “I have to go to the funeral . . . even if it means missing class, Mum. I can’t not go.”
    “I understand, Grace. We’ll work something out. It’s okay.”
    “Everyone says they’re going,” she says. Her eyes are bloodshot; her face is stained with tears. “I know we weren’t best friends, but it doesn’t mean we can’t, does it?”
     
    I discover, too, that grief is different things to different people. Comes in many guises. In shocked silences and closed doors around our village, as people try to shut it out. That a blank face or fleeting smile can hide the worst, most private kind of agony.
    I leave it several days longer than I planned before I call round to see Jo, expecting drawn curtains, locked doors, and no one to answer. It would be easier, too, because I can leave the flowers I’ve picked from the garden in the shade of her porch. Post Grace’s card. Not have to look at her and see from the pain in her eyes how real this is.
    As I pull up outside, there are several parked cars on a road that is usually empty. The press? But though I feel eyes watching, they don’t approach me, even as I raise my hand to knock and the door opens.
    “Jo . . .” I look at her, then hold out my arms, suddenly unable to speak. For all the time I’ve spent thinking about this, prepared what I’d say if I actually saw her, there are no words.
    She lets me hold her, and I think, She’s still Rosie’s mother. She’ll always be Rosie’s mother. Nothing and no one can change that.
    “I’m so sorry, Jo. I didn’t want to disturb you. I just wanted to leave these.”
    “Oh. They’re lovely. . . .” She barely looks at the flowers I hand her. Her eyes are glassy; her words thick with medically induced evenness. “Will you come in?”
    “I won’t, Jo. I don’t want to intrude.” I step back.
    “Please . . .” There’s a pleading note in her voice as she glances up the road to see who’s watching her. “Please come and have a cup of tea.”
    I follow her inside, awkward, because I don’t know her well enough to be here, dimly recalling how tea and grief are as synonymous as fish and chips. Then, as we pass from the hallway into her sitting room, I stop to gaze in astonishment. There are flowers and cards covering every surface, so many and so beautiful, it’s almost wrong.
    She doesn’t pause, just walks down the steps into the huge live-in kitchen. I can’t help thinking that if we were closer, I’d gently bully her into sitting down while I made the tea, perhaps sneak a drop of medicinal brandy into it. But we’re not close. And Jo’s private—if not about the shops she buys her designer clothes from, or the gala balls and charity events she and Neal go