I try to fall asleep too, but I toss and turn. I look at my alarm clock. Almost midnight. I wonder if Dewey’s sleeping right now, if she knows that tomorrow we’ll be coming for her. I look at Dewey’s picture on my wall and focus hard, shut my eyes tightly, and tell her, Soon, Dewey, I’ll be there soon.

Chapter 19

D-DAY (D FOR DEWEY)

Eight thirty a.m., Saturday. Rubbery store-bought doughnuts for breakfast. No French toast, but I can’t complain because today is the day.

I still eat half of a white-powdered doughnut and half of a waxy-chocolate-covered one. Macy goes for a chocolate. Gramps takes one of the plain doughnuts and frowns while he dunks it in his coffee.

“Dad?” Mom asks Gramps. “You all right?”

“You tell me,” he answers, sulking. “Apparently I’m not ‘all right’ enough to pack up my own belongings.”

Gramps winks at Macy and me—this is part of his plan to get Moms out of the house.

“Ed, you understand,” Mama interjects. “With all the lifting and sorting and going up and down the stairs. You don’t want to do all that anyway, do you?”

“When you put it like that, it does sound like pretty hard labor.” Gramps shifts his eyes over to Noah, who is stuffing his face with alternating bites of white-powdered, cinnamon-covered, and chocolate doughnuts. “Nothing a strapping youngster like yourself can’t handle, though. Right?”

“Who, me?” Noah mumbles, powdered sugar coating the corners of his lips. “Do I have to?” Noah whines.

Mama collects our doughnut plates, messing Noah’s hair with her free hand on her way to the sink. “No, you don’t have to, Noah . . .”

“But it would be nice if you offered,” Mom finishes. She stands and starts clearing hers and Mama’s empty coffee and tea mugs.

Noah sighs. Gramps holds his hand up and says, “Forget I said anything. Really, it’s okay. Don’t want to overstep my place. After all, I’m just the grandpa.”

After their backs are turned, Gramps silently slips his wallet out of his pocket and pulls out a crisp twenty-dollar bill, waving it at Noah and tipping his head as if to ask a silent question. Noah responds with an enthusiastic head nod that makes his hair bounce up and down. Gramps smiles and slides the twenty across the table.

Noah folds it up in his palm and announces, as he stands from his seat, “Actually, Moms, I’ll come. I want to help.”

“Really?” Mom asks, her eyebrows raised doubtfully.

“Yeah,” Noah responds. “You’re right, I should’ve offered to begin with.”

Ten minutes later, after an elaborate conversation about the pros and cons of taking both cars (in which they decided they could fit more of Gramps’s stuff if they took both), Mom, Mama, and Noah are finally ready to leave.