"You ready to bring Dad’s stuff back in?" I ask him.
"Eat first," Brooks says, nodding to the scone in my hand. "Then we’ll do the heavy lifting."
"Tell me something," I say as I take another bite of blueberry.
Brooks sits across from me at the dining room table, raising a brow. "Anything."
"When are you going to sell your grandmother’s house?"
His gaze shifts. He licks his lips, nervous. "I don’t know."
"I know you love being here and I know you love helping," I say gently. "But you have to live your own life, Brooks. Jasper, Mom, and Dad… they’ll figure things out."
He nods, slowly. "Yeah. I know. I just… I like being here." There’s a pause before he adds, almost too casually, "Are you, uh, planning on staying?"
"Indefinitely?" I ask, meeting his eyes.
Brooks doesn’t answer. He just looks away.
The truth is, I don’t know. I have a life in Los Angeles. A career. An apartment. All the things I once believed defined me. Now that Dad’s getting better, it’s time to start thinking about return tickets. Time to remember who I was before all this.
"I’m not sure," I admit. "I’ve been an influencer for so long… I’m not convinced I’d be good at anything else."
Brooks chuckles, soft and sincere. "I think you could do anything you put your mind to, Ellie."
I smile. "That means a lot coming from you."
"If you need to go back to California," he says quietly, "I want you to know we’ll be okay here."
His words hit something deep. He’s willing to stay, to carry the weight, to let me go. Still.
"When I figure it out," I tell him, "you’ll be the first to know."
Brooks and I finish in companionable silence, the weight of the day ahead grounding us.
We carry the boxes from the garage one at a time. Some are labeled neatly—‘Socks’, ‘Books’, ‘Nightstand’—while others are messier, marked in Mom’s hasty scrawl. We work in silence for a while, the sound of our footsteps on old wood filling the quiet. It feels like muscle memory, falling into step with him like this.
When we open the last box, the one filled with Dad’s framed photos, and odds and ends, I pause.
"This one’s his favorite," I say, picking up a picture of Mom and Dad at the lake. They’re younger, sunburned, laughing. Her arm is thrown around him. They look like the kind of couple who thought they had forever.
I trace the edge of the frame with my thumb, following the faint nick where the wood once split. I remember that day. The lake water cold and green, Mom shrieking when Dad splashed her, and the smell of grilled corn and sunscreen thick in the air. For a long time, that photo hurt too much to look at. Now, it feels like proof that forever can exist, even if it doesn’t last the way I expected it to.
Brooks leans over my shoulder, close enough that I feel the warmth of him at my back. "He used to keep that one on the windowsill," he says softly.
"I know."
We set the picture back in its place together, like it never left.
"Do you think things will ever go back to how they were?" I ask.
Brooks crouches beside the bed, straightening the quilt like it’s a sacred ritual. "No. But maybe that’s not the point."
I sink to the floor beside him, knees drawn to my chest. "Then, what is the point?"
He looks over at me, steady and sure. "That you’re still here. That he’s still fighting. That your mom walked into that hospital room. That somehow, despite everything, people keep choosing each other."
I swallow hard. "Even when it’s messy?"
