Chapter 4: Chapter 4: Building back up

It's Saturday. I answer the door for the 100th time today, and as I guessed, it's another neighbor with food, which was pretty ironic since none of us had appetites. I'm pretty sure I've lost 3 pounds. Neighbors have been visiting us all week, giving us jello, mashed potatoes, sandwiches, casseroles. Lots of food. We just put them in the fridge and let them go bad. I hated our new "family of 5". It felt like it barley any people, even though there are 5 of us. Not having six people felt like having no people. We tried to talk to each other, but there is nothing to talk about. We just sit down all day and stay inside. I tried to watch TV with my little sister Ava. It was going pretty well until one of those stupid news reports came on and of course, it was talking about Millie. That completely ruined the fun and then neither of us were in the mood to watch TV. We were drifting apart, all of us. Ava brought home her report card 2 days ago and my parents have yet to open it. It's not that they're busy, they just don't care. Ava didn't even open it either. She didn't even talk about it or care. I finally opened it and she got all A's. I was pretty proud. I made sure she knew that. It's funny, how people always say that after someone you love dies, you become closer with everyone else and make sure you spend as much time with them as possible, but that's not what happened, the exact opposite happened. As a reward for Ava's report card, I bought her rainbow ice cream, her favorite. I bought ice cream for everyone else too, and for the first time, we actually talked to each other and we even laughed. We didn't sit at the table, sitting at the table, with that one empty chair, teased us. We were building back up our relationships, slowly.