“But… you wouldn’t mind, would you?” And there it was. She’d said it out loud. The thing I couldn’t.
I bit down on my bottom lip and rolled it between my teeth, hesitating. “Maybe?” I didn’t want to sound too enthusiastic.
My answer was met with a few seconds of silence.
“Maybe I should’ve been the one to go on that trip.”
“Is Mom being difficult?”
“No… She’s fine. I just—” She paused. “A change sounds nice.”
There was a quiet note in her voice. Not quite tired. Not quite wistful. Just…off. It was something I didn’t usually hear from my sister, who always seemed to have it all together.
“Sounds like you and Beckett need a vacation,” I said, picturing her and her good-looking, dependable, smart, charming, perfect husband sipping cocktails on a beach somewhere.
“Yeah.” A long sigh. “Maybe.”
Before I could ask what that was supposed to mean, she pivoted—sharp as ever—firing off a string of questions about the guy who’d managed to distract me from the dumpster fire waiting for me back in Newport.
I told her how he’d helped with Roger back in Moab, then how sweet he was when he talked about his pets. That he was divorced.
“And his mom doesn’t seem to totally hate me anymore.”
“She’s the one getting over cancer, right?”
“I told you about that?”
“Yeah… I mean, you must have, right?”
“I think the altitude’s getting to me. But yeah. Noah says she’s been given a clean bill of health, but the treatment, the stress. But she was actually kind of fun on the train this morning.” Which reminded me. “Hey, Ash?”
“Yeah?”
“Being on that train today…” I hesitated, already feeling my throat tighten. “It made me think about Dad. I wish Mom hadn’t gotten rid of his little village.” My voice came out sharper than I meant.
“She didn’t get rid of it, Luna.”
I blinked. “What?”
“It’s in storage. All boxed up. For when the boys are older.” A pause. “It was my idea.”
“Oh.” I hadn’t expected that. The image I remembered was of an empty basement, cold and echoey. I’d assumed it had all been trashed. “She didn’t waste much time, though.”
“She wasn’t the one who packed it up,” Ashley said, more gently now. “I was.”
That didn’t compute. I’d heard Mom complain about that train village a hundred times. “Why?”
“You weren’t here,” Ashley said quietly. “You didn’t see her.”
“See her how?”
“I stopped by once, maybe a month after the funeral. She was downstairs. Just…sobbing.”
I couldn’t picture it. Not Mom. Stoic, buttoned-up, battle-ready even at Gran’s funeral.
“She doesn’t cry,” I said, more to myself than to Ashley. “She didn’t even cry at?—”
“She does,” Ashley interrupted. “Just not when you’re looking.”
