“And this one was from when the ice cream shop was doing that deal,” she mutters, naming all the ones that seem familiar.
And then she stops, looking at something in her palm. “Oh no, did you find the dirty ones?” I wince.
“No,” she says. “But are these…”
She lowers her hand, showing them to me.
I don’t know what to tell her.
The truth.
“Yeah,” I say quietly. “They’re the stamps from your letters.”
She counts them, her shoulders slumping. “You read all of them?”
“Every last one.”
Amara sent them nearly every month, even long after I stopped responding.
It’s how I knew how hurt she was before I was even drafted to Baltimore. How I knew that I shouldn’t reach out.
How I knew that there was likely no way that I ever actually talked to her ever again.
When I stopped responding, the letters started off upset. Then curious. Then they got angrier and angrier, until she told me she never wanted to see my face again.
I deserved them. Who the hell just drops off the face of the earth without a word? How could I possibly explain to her that I couldn’t bring myself to form words for her?
Amara deserved better.
She sighs, putting the box down. Her eyes meet mine, and I almost fold right there.
I’m ruined for this woman. But the pain in them let me know that we’ll be having a conversation about this. Maybe not tonight. Maybe not tomorrow, but at some point, this will come up again.
For another hour, the two of us go through the house, talking about the memories we care to share with the world. When there’s one that we don’t want out there, Amara would tap my arm, or I’d touch her waist. To anyone on the outside, it looks like affection. To us, it’s a quiet, polite way to tell the other to shut the hell up.
“Is this your sister’s room?” Edward asks.
“We’re not going in there,” I say firmly, and when Edward raises a brow, I add, “Those are her things, and she’s not in this show. There’s no reason to invade her privacy.”
He seems to accept that, but then points to another room. Amara’s head whips around to watch me, her eyes wide.
“Neither of us is going in there, either,” I tell him. I usually have really great patience for Edward, but something about the pushiness here is pissing me off.
Amara yawns. “I think we’re done for the night,” I tell him, and when he opens his mouth to argue, I repeat myself.
They retreat begrudgingly.
When I see the crew pull out of the driveway, I let out the breath I was holding. “Thank god,” I groan.
“Yeah, I’m going to go get ready for bed,” Amara says, grabbing her things. She’s across the hall in a second, opening my sister’s door.
Only to stop in her tracks.
“Um, Cooper?” she asks.
“Yeah?”
“Did your sister say that she cleared her room out?”
