And then the last photo in the album: Beau, me, Nana, and Pops, all standing on the porch. It was late summer—I could tell by the golden light, by the way the crops looked in the background. Nana had her arm around me, squeezing tight. Pops had his hand on Beau’s shoulder. We were all smiling like we didn't know it would be the last time.
The last summer the Sterlings visited.
Three weeks later, Nana died. Heart attack, sudden and devastating. And the Sterlings—they just... stopped coming. No explanation, no gradual fade-out. Just silence.
I’d been twelve. Old enough to understand death, but young enough that losing Nana and losing the Sterlings in the same year had felt like the world ending twice.
"I remember this day," Beau said quietly, his finger hovering over the photo without touching it. "It was right before we left to go back to Dallas. Nana made us pose for this. Said she wanted to remember the summer."
"This was taken a week before she died."
His sharp intake of breath told me he’d done the math. "Shit. Winnie, I—"
"You didn't know. None of y'all knew. She seemed fine in this picture. She seemed fine until she wasn't."
I closed the album, suddenly needing to not look at those happy faces anymore. I set it carefully in the "keep" pile. Some things you couldn't donate or throw away, no matter how much they hurt to hold.
"We should've come back," Beau said after a long moment, his voice thick. "After the funeral. We should've checked on you and Pops, should've... something. Anything. Instead, we just disappeared, and that was shitty. I was a kid, so I didn't understand it then, but now—as an adult looking back—that was really fucking shitty of us."
"You were twelve."
"So were you. And you lost your grandmother. And then you lost us too."
The way he said it—like he understood the weight of that double abandonment—made something crack open in my chest.
"I was mad at y'all for a long time," I admitted, still not looking at him. "Mad that you didn't come back, didn't call, didn't even send a card. Pops tried to explain that adults have complicated reasons for things, but I was twelve and angry and I just... I felt abandoned. First my bio parents, then Nana, then the one friend who understood what it was like to be the weird kid who didn't quite fit in anywhere."
"You weren't weird."
"I was the Black kid being raised by white grandparents on a ranch in Oklahoma. I was definitely weird."
"You were cool. You knew how to do everything—ride horses, fix fences, catch frogs. I thought you were the coolest person I’d ever met."
I finally looked at him, and his expression was so earnest, so genuinely regretful, that I had to look away again before I did something stupid like cry in front of him.
"Well, you left," I said, trying to keep my voice light. "And I got over it. Moved on. Had to."
"But you didn't really. Get over it, I mean."
"What makes you say that?"
"Because you've been treating me like I'm that same kid who left for the past week and a half. Like you're waiting for me to disappoint you again. Like you're bracing for impact."
Fuck.He wasn't wrong.
"Maybe I am," I said quietly. "Maybe I'm just protecting myself from caring about someone who's gonna leave anyway."
"What if I don't leave?"
"You will. End of summer, you're gone. Back to Dallas, back to your real life. That's the deal."
"What if I changed the deal?"
I laughed, but it came out bitter. "You can't change the deal, Beau. That's not how this works. You're here because your daddy made you come, because you fucked up in Dallas and this is your punishment. The second you're allowed to go back, you will, because why would you stay? There's nothing here for you."
"That's not true."
"Isn't it? You miss your parties, your friends, your lifestyle. This is just a summer vacation with chores."
