"Nora, eat your breakfast," I said, gathering her homework from the coffee table to stuff it into her backpack.
"I don't want it," she replied.
I zipped up her backpack and tossed it onto the couch. "I don't care, you need to eat."
"But you're not eating."
My eyes closed as I rubbed them. These days, my patience was slim to absolute none. "I'm an adult, Nora. I don't have to eat if I don't want to eat. You are six years old and you will eat breakfast before you go to school like every other six-year-old in the world."
We stared at each other for about thirty seconds, but when she shook her head and pushed her plate away, I started nodding as my lips pursed to the side. She looked up at me with wide eyes as I grabbed her plate full of pancakes and eggs, passing Maria to throw it into the sink. The porcelain made an ear-splitting sound as it shattered.
Nora started crying as I dropped the utensils in next, but I felt nothing. I had cried so many times in the last three weeks that it took too much energy from my body to start up again. I didn't have it in me anymore.
"Daddy," Nora sobbed as Harry came walking into the room from his office to see what all the commotion was.
"It's okay, baby," Harry mumbled to Nora, "go get your jacket from your room and I'll take you to school, alright?"
Nora agreed through her cries as Harry set her back on the floor. I paused with my hands on the edge of the sink, doing my best to ignore Harry as he just stood there and stared at me. On any other given day when I might have broken a glass, he would have insisted on cleaning it up himself. He knew better than to try that right now.
"Whatever you're about to say, don't," I started picking out the thick shards first.
"I was just going to say that I'm going to take her to school, and then I want you to come somewhere with me."
"No," I nearly cut him off in passing toward the trashcan, but then he intercepted and stood in front of it.
As nicely as he could manage, he said, "I wasn't asking you, Grace."
I looked up at him, but if anyone could win a staring contest, it was Harry. His expression was so much meaner and more serious than mine could ever be, even when I was feeling the way I felt now. "Can you move?"
Reluctantly, he stepped aside to let me toss the glass in our trash. He said nothing else to me before meeting Nora by the front door. One half of me was dying to hug her goodbye while the other half couldn't care less.
I really didn't know what the appropriate amount of time was to grieve somebody. I've never had to do it. As far as I knew, I had no aunts or uncles, no grandparents, no cousins or siblings. They were either all alive somewhere, all dead, or never existed at all.
But here I was, three weeks to the day that I walked in to find my dad murdered in his apartment no more than twenty feet away from me, and it might as well have happened five minutes ago. Every day only got harder to get through, but easier to snap and lose my temper.
The worst part was that my closest people and the ones I loved the very most were on the receiving end of whatever was happening to me. Nora hadn't had a hug or kiss from me since it happened, and I was so hyper-aware of how negatively it was affecting her. Even on her birthday the next day, I kept having to go into Harry's office to cry every twenty minutes or so, and my heart wasn't there celebrating her special day with her, especially when she kept asking where John was. I just couldn't get over myself long enough to put on a brave face for her.
