My phone erupts into Darth Vader’s “Imperial March.” I scoop Charlie off the polished concrete floor and lower him into the shopping cart, shove AirPods into my ears, and brace myself.

“Mum?”

The custom ringtone was Cam’s idea. An attempt to cheer me up, after one of Mum’s cyclonic visits. She means well, and I love her dearly. But there’d been some bumps as we morphed into mother and grandmother. Cam thought the ringtone would give me a laugh the next time she called, and it did.

Then he went and got sick. And now I can’t bring myself to undo his joke.

I can’t undo anything. I’m still paying his phone bill, just to hear his voicemail. A copy of Bruce Springsteen’s autobiography is still facedown and spread-eagled on the bedside table, partially read. I can’t even declutter all the sticky notes he left strewn all over the house and through my car and in my handbag. Even his handwriting brings me to my knees...

“I’m at the supermarket,” I announce once I finally have Mum’s attention. She has a habit of calling me just before she’s actually available to speak—usually while she’s finishing a conversation with someone else. Cam called it “conversational limbo.”

I reach for his favorite soap. Inhale it. Pass it to Charlie in the cart. He sniffs it too.

“The supermarket?” Mum repeats, as if she’s flabbergasted. Everything I do, no matter how mundane, seems to come as a shock to my mum. Always has.