[[OLD]] A Handful of Daffodils (Forgotten Series, #7)

Chapter Seventeen

Two weeks later

I carried the last of the grocery bags through the front door and set them with the rest. Menza and I had sat down last night and went through what we had left in the house for food and essentials. She had been completely wary of doing it and had defaulted to me but at my urging she slowly started to tell me the little things she had noticed were low and needed replacing.

I was honestly growing a bit fond of her. Mainly because of how she responded whenever I said I felt like I needed to be over Chrissie passing. She was always adamant that no, Chrissie was my female, that she hadn't been gone for long and to continue to hurt over it was okay and expected. She would then ask me about her, urging me to tell her stories about my female and it helped. I swore I spoke about Chrissie more in the last two weeks than I had at any point in my entire life. But it helped. I no longer felt so disconnected from Chrissie, the pain was still there and when I talked about her my chest ached but it was like a good ache.

I closed the front door and spotted Menza kneeling on the floor, her arms in the cupboard as she cleaned it out. I could see the dirty bucket of soapy water and I could only imagine she was giving it a deep clean for the new canned goods. I sighed slightly, she did that a lot. Cleaned out the most random places, especially following some of our conversations or I did something in the house. I didn't understand it.

"Is Maeve sleeping?" I picked up some of the bags and brought them over to the kitchen counter to set them down.

"Yes, I put her down shortly after you left." She turned her head, not looking at me but as if trying to show me she was engaging in the conversation and not ignoring me.

"That's good." I went and grabbed some more bags before carrying them to the counter. "Just about done in there?" I watched as she had nearly tucked her front half into the small place and smiled. I wouldn't have gotten anywhere close to that far into the cupboard.

"Yah." Her voice was muffled and I nodded as I went back to the bags and finished carrying them to the kitchen counter. I slowly started taking the various canned goods out and setting them on the counter.

"Where do you want the plastic bags?" I crumpled up the one I just emptied and there was the sound of a wet cloth plopping into water.

"I can collect them later." At the words I looked over my shoulder at her and she was standing up. She winced as she pressed her hand to her lower back and stretched it. I could only imagine why her back was a little sore, that much twisting and bending to clean out some cupboards would do that.

I wanted to argue with her and tell her just to tell me where she wanted them but she was just starting to stop flinching when I moved too fast around her and was actually having conversations with me so I decided to just leave it. "Alright." I set the bag off to the side as I started on taking some boxed cakes out of the next bag.

"Oh...I could have made you some cakes from scratch if you wanted." The words were slowly, as if she were still wary of speaking to me as she picked up one of the boxes.

"Chrissie loved to use those." I cleared my throat and gave her a small smile. "Would add an extra egg and some pudding mix. They were honestly the best cakes I've ever tasted." I set some of the pudding packages next to the boxes and Menza simply nodded her acceptance.

"Okay." She set the box down and grabbed a bunch of the cans, carrying them over to the cupboard she had been cleaning out. I continued to empty bags, setting the plastic bags into that little pile I had started. The kitchen was quiet and I felt a little awkward about it. It had been rare there had been silence between Chrissie and I when we were in the same room. We were either talking or laughing or she was humming. It was so strange to get used to the silence.