Finally, I sit up and throw my covers off, then head for the rickety stairs that lead to the kitchen.

Whenever I can’t sleep at Gram’s—I still think of it that way, even though she’s gone and I live here now—I go down to the kitchen. Usually I find her there, stirring milk on the stove and heating up a slice of apple pie. Like she’s been expecting me.

I do my best to tiptoe down the creaking steps. I don’t want to wake Mom and start another fight.

My heart jumps to my throat when I see a light on in the kitchen and someone padding around the stove. And even though, deep down, I know it can’t be her—that it can never be her again—it doesn’t stop me from hoping. If anyone could return from the dead, it would be Gram.

It’s not, though. It’s just Dad in his red checkered bathrobe.

“Hey there, Butterfly,” he says, casting a tired smile across the midnight kitchen. “You doing okay?”

I am too old to be called Butterfly, and most times I roll my eyes when he calls me that, but secretly I don’t mind it. And tonight, it feels extra nice.

“No,” I say. “Not really.”

“Yeah. Silly question. Take a seat.”

He nods to the round wooden table that has so many scars running through it you could almost believe it had once been a giant’s battle shield.

“You couldn’t sleep, either?” I ask.

“No,” he says. “Thought I’d come down and heat up some warm milk and pie. That’s what your gram always did for me when I was a kid.”

“Me, too.”

Dad smiles as he stirs the milk. Then he pours it out in two mugs and serves us each a piece of the blackberry pie Gloria brought after the funeral. It’s not as good as Gram’s apple pie, but it will have to do.

“Sorry about your mom,” Dad says, halfway through his slice. “You know she’s been stressed.”

Mom was really mad at me for running off earlier. She said it was because I didn’t ask her, and I told her I didn’t ask her because if I had, she wouldn’t have let me go. Then she said that was all the more reason for me not to go, which makes absolutely no sense. When she saw that I’d ruined my dress, her mouth folded into a thin line like it always does before she’s about to totally lose it.

Things went downhill from there.

“She won’t even miss Gram,” I grumble into my pie. “She’s just stressed about the move and the house and everything.”

Mom designs houses that have “clean lines” and “open floor plans.” Gram’s cottage, with its comfy, overstuffed couches and tabletops cluttered with knickknacks, is probably her worst nightmare.