He'd stalled long enough. He inched one finger beneath the tape and ripped the paper away from the frame.
Took a deep breath. Turned over the frame.
It was full of pictures. Him and West on their stomachs hanging off the side of a fishing dock. Him and West mugging over two flashlights at a camp-out with Noah. Older photos. Faded ones of the two brothers with Mom's arms around them.
His chest tightened. Where had Mackie even found the photos? He'd left everything behind when he'd run away. He'd stored that old shoebox in the top of the closet, but he was sure Mackie would've thrown away the photos, not kept them.
She was the opposite of sentimental.
Was it possible she'd saved the photos to hurt him somehow?
He turned over the frame in his hands, searching for some answer that would make sense.
The corner of the cardboard tucked into the frame wasn't flat, as if whoever had put in the photos had been in a hurry.
It was a cheap frame. Small metal slivers held the back on. It only took a moment to bend them up and take off the back.
The photos that looked like a collage out of the front of the frame were covering a newspaper clipping, one big enough to fill the frame.
Where his heart had been beating with joy moments ago, now dread cinched his chest tight.
He carefully set the photos aside and turned over the newsprint.
HOMETOWN BOY BLINDED
The headline was a fist to his solar plexus. He didn't have to scan the article to know what it said. It was about Noah and the accident, and no doubt detailed Cord's part in it.
Thiswas what Mackie had framed and wrapped for him. He knew it in his bones.
Except, Mackie wasn't the kind of person to hide pain behind photos. It didn’t make sense.
He stared at the words on the page. Shame rose up to choke him.
Molly was humming in the kitchen. Minutes ago, he'd wanted to join her, find the camaraderie they'd had last night.
He'd opened this stupid frame to prove to himself Mackie couldn't hurt him anymore.
But there was still a scared thirteen-year-old hiding inside him. One who still believed what she'd said.
That he didn't deserve good things.
He would never amount to anything.
He was a failure.
But was she right?
Or wrong?
He fingered the edge of the oldest photo, the one with Mom. Oh, he missed her. There was still a lingering ache that had never faded.
He'd lost the memory of her scent soon after he and West had come to live with Mackie. Then the sound of her voice had faded.
He'd give anything for one whisper.
You can do anything you set your mind to.
She'd told him that once. He'd been about ten, stinging from a bad grade on a math test at school. He'd really been too big for snuggles, but she'd let him curl against her on the couch anyway, had rifled his hair, then let her hand rest on the back of his neck.
