Icing
She’d had enough sleepless nights to know there was no point in hoping. 1:18. Left down the hall and to the right, she heard her mother in the kitchen. The clunk of wooden spoons on glass bowls, the thump of a rolling pin, squeak of the oven door. Making tomorrow’s wedding feast.
She wondered if he was sleeping.
An hour ago she’d listened as her dad trudged over to the stairs, stopped a moment outside her door, then held her breath as he climbed slowly up. His footsteps across her ceiling, muffled over the carpet to the bathroom, the pipes whine then hush. Down the hall the bed squeaked as he wrestled into position, then quiet.
Through the rooms came the warm fragrance of berries and cinnamon and roast meats and… she thought of all the Christmases and parties; all those nights her mother must have stayed up like this.
She pictured her calculating servings, and making too much of everything anyway (you never know, and we can always have it cold), brushing hair from her face with the bent wrist of her flour-covered hand, turning that lousy radio up a notch when there’s a song she loves.
She wondered what she was thinking.
She imagined getting out of bed and going into that warm kitchen; wrapping her hands around a mug of tea, just sitting there and watching. But it was her last night in this sleepless bed, and she wanted to remember it like this.
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