“But how will that help?” Walt said. He still missed his wife, who had died several years ago. She didn’t want this to be painful for him, but they’d had a beautiful love story.
“It will help her to believe in love again,” Polly said. “I think it’s a very romantic idea.”
“What’s the name of the app?” Harry placed his glasses on the tip of his nose and attempted to navigate his smart phone.
“Samantha can help us,” Don declared. “I’ll talk to her to get this set up.”
“Thank you, Don,” Winnie said, feeling relief. Not only had they liked her idea, but Samantha—the activities director at the Palms, and an unofficial member of the Secret Seven—was always a wonderful teacher and would help them get logged in and make a new group account.
“What should we call it?” Winnie asked.
“The Secret Seven!” Rosa said, then gave everyone a fake-innocent expression as their heads swiveled in her direction. “I kid, I kid.”
“What about Wedded Bliss?” Walt said, his eyes suspiciously wet.
They all looked at one another, and she could feel their excitement rising.
Chapter 11
Ashersatonthefloor, snatched a handful of junk mail and an empty box, and shoved everything back where it should go.
The nerve of Eliana. Thinking she could go through his grandpa’s belongings. Like they didn’t mean anything. Like it was so easy to discard them.
He hardly glanced at the mail as he stuffed a box as full as he could, every movement jerky and heated. He snatched another box to continue with the magazines. Celebrity faces stared back at him, a blur of people he’d never really know, yet had so much information about their lives right at his fingertips.
He paused at a cover with Aurelia Halifax on it. She held her guitar as if caught mid-song.A Duo Made in Heaven, the small text under the headline said.
He heard enough gossip down at the Palms to know that Aurelia and Bo had not only broken up, but he’d stolen an album’s worth of songs from her.
The heat fueling Asher’s rage dissolved, like steam escaping his pressure cooker. His spine went limp as he leaned against the legs of the couch and stared up at the ceiling.
What was he doing?
He didn’t need to keep all this stuff. He didn’t evenwantto keep it.
On some level, he knew his grandpa’s memory wasn’t found in celebrity gossip magazines or old bedding. He turned his head to the side and spotted the boxer shorts. He winced. Or old underwear.
He scrubbed his hands down his face, remembering Eliana’s hurt expression.
She shouldn’t have gone through the boxes. She shouldn’t be here at all.
But she wasn’t wrong. Most of this was garbage. He boxed up the garbage and pushed it to the corner of the room. One glance at the giveaway pile, and he decided he didn’t even want to go through it.
The final pile she’d set aside was the keep pile. It was small—so far there were only three things in it. A china tea set he remembered his grandma using on Sundays and special occasions. A framed picture of his grandparents from a cruise they went on about twenty years ago. And a hemp friendship bracelet.
He pulled it from the pile, surprised to see it there. He hadn’t thought about this bracelet in years. He’d made a matching set when he was ten or eleven, and had given one to his grandpa, keeping the other for himself.
Asher had no idea where his bracelet was—probably thrown away in one of the many moves of his childhood. But Grandpa had kept his all this time.
Emotion clogged his chest, making it hard to breathe, hard to think beyond the rough fibers rubbing against his fingers and the memory of his grandpa’s smile as he’d tied it around his wrist. This was why Asher didn’t want to go through the boxes. This was why he’d put it off for so long.
He didn’t even want to take the time to put on his wet suit before he fled toward the ocean. He slipped off his shoes and socks and stood in the water, letting the waves run over his pants, soaking his legs up to his knees.
He inhaled the salty air as deeply as his lungs would allow and then held the air inside. He repeated the action over and over until his hands stopped shaking and his heart stopped racing.
He clung to his grandpa’s bracelet. Tiny, clown-nose red and sky-blue beads had been interwoven in the fibers. He couldn’t recall why he’d chosen those specific colors, or if his bracelet had been an exact match.
A crater opened up inside of him, and it could not be closed again. On one side of the chasm, everything was safe. His life stayed the same as it always had been—a holding pattern or a limbo of sorts, where the future couldn’t quite touch him. On the other side … he didn’t know what was on the other side of the chasm, and that disturbed him most. It was vast and unknown. It was untethered to his family.
