“Okay.”
“I am cleaning out the upstairs,” Nancy said, turning her attention to him. “So you should run up and check out the boxes in your old room.”
“I already came by and did mine,” Matthew said. “Not that any of you care. Maybe Mom just threw all my things away.”
“Sure, golden boy,” he said. “That’s likely.”
Lydia got up from her chair and went over to the sink, getting a washcloth wet, and dabbing at the front of her dress. He decided to take that as his cue to go upstairs.
“I’ll just go check it out.”
He hadn’t been upstairs in the house in some time. Maybe not since he’d moved out. There just wasn’t really a reason to. There was a guest bathroom downstairs, and sometimes he felt reluctant to take a walk down memory lane. Yes, he had childhood memories here, but . . . it was all complicated.
This had been the best time of his life in many ways. But being here also made him ache. He pushed open the door that led to his teenage bedroom. He had had his own bedroom here. It still blew his mind. That they had been so generous to him.
The space looked different now. No posters on the wall.
And a few boxes in the center of the room. He opened one up and looked inside.
His yearbook.
Yes. It was past time he took the stuff with him.
It really said a lot that he was going through things at this house at the same time as Matthew and Lydia.
That maybe, just maybe, this was his family. And he did belong.
Yeah, because family would be checking out Lydia’s legs.
There was an outdated PlayStation, but he was actually feeling nostalgic, so he figured he would keep it. And there was a birthday card in the box with puppies on the front. He frowned. But he opened it up and saw that it was from Lydia. For his seventeenth birthday.
Of course she had given him a card with puppies. Even if it wasn’t his thing, it was very much hers. And she wouldn’t be able to imagine anything more charming. He chuckled.
It was just so . . . her.
Sweet. And a little bit lost in her own world. But he liked that about her. He always had.
The door creaked, and he looked up. And there she was, standing there in that white dress, looking at him.
“Yes?”
“I just . . . I was curious what was . . .”
“A birthday card from you.”
She slipped inside. “Really?”
“Yes. You hoped that my birthday waspaws-itivelywonderful.” He handed her the card as she crouched down by the box, moving to her knees. She looked at the card and laughed. “What was I thinking?”
“The same thing you were thinking when you brought me a damned dog. You can’t imagine anybody not finding this as charming as you do.”
“Well, that makes me sound selfish.”
“You’re not selfish.”
He looked at her profile, at the way her blond hair fell into her face. She was sweet in ways that no one else he knew was. She was the last person on earth who could ever be considered selfish. She just caredso muchabout the things she cared about, she couldn’t understand that other people might not. He knew that intuitively. Understood it.
“What else is in the box? Or is it personal?”
