What Little Worlds

Ninteen

A/N: LONGEST CHAPTER EVER. I apologize readers, I hope this chapter is worth the marathon :) 

Amelie didn't cry at her mother's funeral. She remembered two snippets from the day that marked her family's life so profoundly. The massive bouquets of white lilies that stood on either side of the funeral home door, and the moment after they closed the casket. Not the closing of the casket, but the five seconds after.

Amelie had been sneaking around the funeral home. Wandering around the different rooms and walking up or down steps that were meant to be left alone. "Exploring" she used to call it. She had happened to be peering into the viewing room in the moment the casket was closing. She mercifully could no longer vividly picture the actual casket being closed, but she distinctly remembered running down the hall and calling out to the remaining family, "They closed the casket!"

Her aunt Julie had come into view within seconds and snagged her into a side room to scold her for the announcement.

Even thinking about it now brought an embarrassed flush to Amelie's cheeks.

Her grief over her mother's death had come in small waves at random stages of life. It came when she was in Maggie's living room and Maggie would talk to her mother about what to buy at the grocery store. It came when she watched her college friends stress about remembering to send their mothers' cards for Mother's Day. She had felt relieved not to have that same stress and then guilty for even contemplating being relieved to not have a mother.

Amelie had moments when she felt a deep longing for her mother to appear and smile reassuringly down at her, but those smiles were conjured from pictures she had seen, not memories she had pulled up herself. The only memories she could conjure of her mother were of a hand tucking her into bed, a warm lap, or a watercolored face with some dark hair.

One time she distinctly did not feel the loss was when she was sick. Most kids stayed home with their mother when they were sick. But, the only time Amelie's father ever missed a day of work was when Amelie was home sick.

She and her dad had a sick day routine. She would spend the day on the couch rather than in bed so that she could be near the TV and the games when she was feeling better. They would start the day with hot chocolate and cereal, if she could manage to eat. Then he would sit on the couch with her and they'd watch TV all morning.

On one disastrous sick day the only solid food she'd had an appetite for was grilled cheese so the tradition of dipping grilled cheese in tomato soup for lunch had started.

In the afternoons she was usually feeling better so they would play cards or whatever board game she was into at the time.

Whatever they did, Amelie's catalog of best memories with her father were almost all from sick days.

As an adult, she still felt the vestiges of pleasant surprise whenever the first sign of a cold struck, even without her dad there to keep her company.

When she woke up on Saturday morning with a fever, the first thing she did was call her dad.

"Make some hot chocolate, grab three bottles of water, and install yourself in front of the TV for the morning. It's always the worst in the mornings and late at night so make sure you medicate yourself best at those times," he said.

"I know Dad, thank you," Amelie replied scratchily through her sore throat.

He just grunted in response. "Oh and make sure you put some blankets near the couch when you're feeling up to it in preparation for when you're feeling worst. You won't want to get up to grab them."