October Nano Prep 2

“Abigail, come downstairs, your mother needs you.” 

Abby’s grandmother stood in the doorway of her bedroom, giving her a hard look.  Abby could feel her hands clench into fists at her sides.  Her mother didn’t need her.  The two of them had barely been alone together in the past 4 days.  They seemed to be constantly enveloped by a cloud of relatives.  People Abby hadn’t seen in years.  They’d all arrived a few hours after her father had been pronounced dead.  She hated them.  Of course that was a terrible thing to think, she knew it.  But, what right did they have to be here taking over her house, never leaving her mother alone?  Abby wanted to scream all this at her grandmother, tell her to get out, go home and leave them alone.  She didn’t, her father wouldn’t approve.  But, what did that matter, he was dead anyways?  Tears filled Abby’s eyes and slid slowly down her cheeks.     

Her grandmother sighed, her shoulders slumping slightly. 

“Abby, you can stay here as long as you want.”  Her grandmother slowly closed the door behind her leaving Abby alone again. 

Abby laid back on her bed, letting the tears roll out of the corners of her eyes into her hair.  Abby reached out and pulled Mr. Brody, the stuffed monkey, out from under her pillow.  She held the monkey against her chest.  Her father had brought it home from a business trip 2 weeks ago.  The last thing he had given her.  She pressed the monkey against her face, trying smell something of him on the toy.  It smelled like plastic and chemicals, nothing more.