Sophia nodded. “Of course.” She jerked her head in the direction of the photo albums he’d placed next to him. “What do you have there?”
He picked up one of the albums and opened it. “A few old photo books. I’m hoping to find a few pics of me and my brothers. We don’t have a whole lot of photos from when we lived here.”
It was understandable, he thought. Daisy Stone had picked up and left Moose Falls with her three boys in tow. They had relocated to Arizona, where they’d lived with their maternal grandfather. Clearly, his mother hadn’t had time to sort through pictures on her way out of town. Once she had decided to leave her husband and Moose Falls in her rearview mirror, it had all happened fast and furiously. As an adult, Caleb realized that everything had occurred at such lightning speed that his mother hadn’t been fully prepared for their new life. For Daisy it must have felt like massive grief. She had been forced to mourn the life she’d left behind, all while raising three spirited children.
There was a reason Daisy Stone was his shero.
The very first picture in the album jumped out at Caleb. Staring back at him were his parents on their wedding day. In his entire life he had never seen any of these photos. Not a single one. And now he was seeing Daisy and Red in all their glory. His mother was wearing a romantic long-sleeved wedding gown that swept all the way down to the ground. His dad was also dressed all in white with a pink bow tie and dark sunglasses. Judging by the lack of snow on the ground, it was spring or summer. They both looked effortlessly cool, as if they had stepped out of the pages of a fashion magazine. They also looked as if they were madly in love with each other. His heart lurched a little bit at the realization.
“What? You look as if you’ve seen a ghost,” Sophia said, leaning forward so she could get a peek at the book.
“That’s exactly what I feel like,” he said, feeling a bit numb as he turned the pages. “It’s like I’m seeing my parents for the first time. They were young… and together. I don’t have a lot of memories of them being happy together.”
Sophia scooted closer to him, clearly wanting to view the photos. Caleb didn’t mind Sophia’s close proximity. She smelled nice, and her attitude seemed to have settled down in the last few minutes. She was being way less snarky.
“Is that Hattie?” Sophia asked, pointing to a black-and-white photo of an attractive woman. Caleb did a double take.
“Whoa. It is her.” He let out a whistle. “This picture must be more than fifty years old.”
“Hattie was a babe,” Sophia gushed. “And your father was Alaskan eye candy.”
Caleb looked over at her and made a face. “Easy there. Those are my family members you’re talking about.”
Sophia rolled her eyes and reached out to turn thepage. She let out a tutting sound. “Oh my goodness, this is adorable.”
The photo was of him and his brothers with their parents. Landon couldn’t have been more than two years old at the time. They were all smiling and happy. For a moment he had the oddest sensation, as if someone had reached into his chest cavity and was squeezing his heart. Because of his parents’ divorce, Caleb had somehow pushed a lot of the good times from his memory. But here was proof right in front of him that they’d experienced joy as a family unit.
Raw emotion threatened to swallow him whole. The photo showcased his family before they were fractured by divorce and their rapid exit from Moose Falls. None of them had known what was coming when they posed for the picture. Even to this day he hated saying the D word out loud.
He cleared his throat. “This is proof that I was always good-looking,” he said in a teasing voice.
“Indeed,” Sophia said, her eyes radiating understanding. Even though he had a habit of making jokes when things got too emotional, he didn’t think that he’d fooled Sophia.
“I get it,” she said. “My parents split up when I was a kid, so I understand. I would probably think I was hallucinating if I came across a photo like this of my family.”
He reached out and ran his hand across the image. “It’s kind of mind-blowing to see these pictures and know that this was my life, even though my memories of all of us together are sort of fuzzy.”
“Yes, but these photos prove that you came from love, and that’s important to know.” She shrugged. “Or at least it was for me. My dad used to always tell me that no matter what went down between my mom and him, they’d once loved each other. And that my sister and I came from that love.”
“That’s nice,” Caleb said, wishing that his own parents had given him that reassurance. But his parents’ divorce had been ugly, and Red hadn’t been present in their lives. There had been a big gaping hole where his father should have been. And it had shaped his life in ways he still was trying to wrap his head around. Being back in Alaska was causing old wounds to reopen.
A grumbling sound emanated from Sophia’s direction.
Caleb turned toward her. “Was that you?”
She nodded. “My stomach is rumbling. I’m starving.” She let out a groan. “Hattie told me to get something to eat, but I decided to venture up here to find the camera first.”
Caleb shook his head. “Never put food on the back burner. That was the motto of the Stone brothers growing up.”
She rubbed her stomach. “I bitterly regret not eating, although the camera is pretty epic.”
“Not to rub it in, but the lobster tails and crab bites are out of this world. Chef’s kiss,” he said, making a gesture by pinching his lips with his fingers and then raising them in the air.
“Thanks for not rubbing it in,” Sophia said, her stomach rumbling even louder. He imagined visions of lobster tails were now dancing in her head and taunting her. “I’ve been meaning to lose weight, but not by being stuck in an attic with no food.”
Caleb’s gaze swung back in her direction. “Lose weight?” His eyes took in her snatched waist and curvy hips. She filled out her dress as if it had been made only for her. The fabric clung to her body in all the right ways. As far as he was concerned, Sophia was flawless.
“You don’t need to lose a single inch,” he told her. “Trust me on that.”
