A million other places.
I didn’t share that because it might make me cry.
Instead, I pulled Laird out of Elsa’s hold, kissed his beautiful head, and then invited, “Come see the house.”
When I turned, I caught Dair’s attention on me, and I nearly tripped at the expression on his face.
He was taking me with Laird in, and I didn’t know if he wanted to wrest the child from me and hand it off before he carried me to our bedroom or if he wanted to shove me and Laird in a car so we could kidnap him.
He visibly jerked himself out of whatever thoughts he was having and winked cheekily at me.
I wasn’t fooled by that wink.
We hadn’t gotten anywhere near talking about kids, but now I knew that conversation would be perfunctory.
I wanted them (two, hopefully both girls).
And I knew he wanted them as well (hopefully also two, but likely he wanted boys).
I bounced Laird on my hip and sashayed into the house, talking gibberish to him.
And again, the weight of Mum dying hadn’t lifted.
But I was feeling even better.
Alex had the wardrobe open and was touching the clothes.
I was sitting at the vanity and touching the bottles of perfume.
“I know it’s soon, but just saying, when we get there, we can auction these off for charity,” Alex said gently.
We were in Mum’s room.
“Yes,” I agreed, picking up one of the bottles, taking off the stopper and smelling it.
Bad idea.
It obviously smelled of her. And because it did, memories crashed and clashed, unbidden, through my brain.
Not one of them good.
I stoppered the perfume and put it down.
“Five things.”
I twisted on the vanity stool to look at my sister, who was now sitting on the side of Mum’s bed.
“Five things?” I asked.
“We need to find five good memories of Mum. Memories with nothing bad attached.”
She might as well ask me to go with her to Mars to plant a garden.
“Alex—”
“We don’t have to do it now, just…can we make a date, before I leave, to have some sister time and compare notes?”
I could do that, seeing as she was staying a week and a half, and it’d probably take us that long to find five good memories of Mum, so I nodded.
