I know that he likes things tidy, which is hard when you sell donuts, because some of them have sprinkles or are crumbly. So when you lift them off the tray, you get crumbs everywhere—on the shelf, on the floor, and sometimes on the counter.

At Dreams there’s a lot of wiping and sweeping, because if Grandpa sees sprinkles all over the glass counter, he won’t be pleased. He’ll say, “Is that counter eating those sprinkles?” So the first thing I did was wipe down the counter, which was already clean.

“Ugh,” whispered Kelsey, “it’s the East twins.”

The East twins were running up to the case and putting their fingers all over the glass front. The two boys were adorable, but every time they came in, they made a huge mess.

“Hi, Mrs. East,” said Kelsey. “What can we get you today?”

Mrs. East always looked like she’d just run through a windstorm. There were always papers coming out of her bag, and her clothes were usually wrinkled or stained.

But she was really nice, and after Mom died she made us a lot of dinners and brought them over. She even came over with a picnic lunch one day for me and Sky and took us to the park.

“Oh, let me get the boys settled here,” she said, lifting them into chairs. “Jason, please stop hitting your brother!”

“That one, that one!” the boys started yelling, waving their little hands at the donuts.

“Boys!” said Mrs. East. “Use your manners! And Christopher, stop screaming!”

The boys scrambled off their chairs and ran back to the counter. Luckily, there was no one else waiting, because it took them a full ten minutes to choose their donuts.

I had one hand over the chocolate iced one when Christopher yelled, “No, no, no, not that one!” and I had to move my hand around the shelf until it was hovering over the “right” one.

“Thank you,” said Mrs. East. “You girls are amazingly patient! And I’m more frazzled today than usual. We just got back from vacation with my mom, and even though we love them, moms can be such a pain sometimes. Right, girls?”

She looked up as she was handing us the money for the donuts and froze. Her eyes went wide as she looked at me, remembering, and then her hand flew over her mouth.

Kelsey shifted from foot to foot nervously.

This happens a lot. People will say things and then be really scared that they said the wrong thing in front of you. Before Mom died, even when she was sick, all of a sudden everyone was really careful about what they said around me. For a month after Mom died, my friends wouldn’t even talk about their moms in front of me.

I talked to Aunt Melissa about it, because she was who I went to for a lot of stuff these days.