Shooting Stars

CHAPTER 4

Aria walked downstairs still half asleep, one hand dragging through her hair, the other covering a yawn she didn't bother trying to hide.

The house already smelled warm.

Cinnamon. Sugar. Something baked. Something burning just a little at the edges because Izzie always got distracted halfway through cooking by whatever emotional crisis was unfolding around her.

It was still early, the kind of grey Seattle morning that made everything outside the windows look washed out and cold, but inside the kitchen there was colour and noise and movement. Alex was leaning against the counter with a knife in hand, carving into a pumpkin with far more focus than anyone should ever have when mutilating a vegetable. Izzie was moving between the oven and the table, flour on her cheek, sleeves pushed up, surrounded by bowls and trays and orange-frosted Halloween chaos.

Aria paused in the doorway, taking it in.

It was domestic in a way their house sometimes accidentally became. Strange and fragile and almost normal.

Then she saw Meredith.

Her sister stood at the kitchen table holding a plastic bag.

And inside it—

Grey ash.

Bone-white dust.

Aria's stomach dropped.

Izzie frowned, looking from Meredith to the bag in her hand. "What's that?"

There was a beat of silence.

Then Aria, still standing in the doorway, said flatly, "Our mother."

The room stilled.

Alex slowly lifted his head from the pumpkin, his knife still in his hand. "Happy freakin' Halloween."

Izzie's eyes widened. "Oh my God."

Meredith just stood there, exhausted and stubborn and entirely too calm for someone carrying around their dead mother in a sandwich bag.

Aria stared at her sister for a long moment. "Please tell me that is not what it looks like."

Meredith looked at the bag, then back at her. "I had to get her out of my closet."

"That sentence alone is insane," Aria muttered.

"She was haunting me," Meredith said simply, as if that explained anything.

Aria let out a disbelieving breath and moved further into the kitchen, rubbing her face. "And now she's haunting the rest of us."

There was something about seeing Ellis reduced to that — to a bag in Meredith's hand, to ashes in morning light, to the remains of a woman who had once filled every room with expectation and fear — that made Aria's chest tighten in a way she didn't want to examine too closely.

Because no matter how much she had tried to untangle herself from Ellis Grey, no matter how many times she had told herself her mother was gone and couldn't hurt her anymore, one glance at that bag and suddenly Aria was sixteen again, standing too straight under Ellis's stare, wondering what failure would cost her that day.

Meredith's voice cut through the quiet. "We're putting her to rest."

Aria looked up sharply. "Today?"

Meredith held her gaze. "Yes."

"Do we have to?"

Meredith glared at her, and Aria immediately lifted both hands in surrender. "Okay. Fine. I'm just asking."