Her breath shudders.
“Are you getting this?” I hear Andrea whisper to the man behind the camera.
“These were…” Scottie whispers, pausing before she faces me as if she just found treasure. “These were my grandparents.”
I kneel beside her without thinking, resting my hand on her back. She leans into me just enough to tell me she’s thankful I’m here. She flips through them, and I can feel the tension radiating off her under the palm of my hand. She looks up at the hole in the ceiling and back down, shaking her head. “I didn’t even know there was an attic.” She laughs softly. “I would have never found these if we didn’t gut this room.”
“Looks like they wanted it found.”
She flips through everything—memories of her grandparents, captured in photos and letters. The pictures aren’t the staged ones you would frame on mantels. They are all candid. One of her grandmother laughing with her head thrown back and barefoot in the yard. Another of her grandfather holding up a fish at Bluestone Lake. There are pictures of road trips and the two of them laughing on the way to dinner. They look young and in love.
Scottie wipes at her eyes, laughing quietly. “I love seeing them like this. I wish I’d gotten the chance to truly know them.”
Something in my chest shifts at the pain I feel for her, never really knowing them the way she wanted to.
“Sometimes people leave the best parts of themselves tucked away.”
The pain I feel for her morphs into a pain at the memories of my past I keep hidden from the world. The ones I’m keeping hidden fromher.
She looks up at me, eyes shining. “You know, you’re really good at this.”
“At letting ceilings fall?”
She shakes her head. “At being here.”
I swallow, not expecting that from this moment. “So are you, Scottie.”
She hugs me suddenly, arms tight around me, while we’re both crouched down in the middle of the room. I hold her like it’s instinct. Like it’s always been this way.
It stays that way for minutes that feel like hours.
I realize then, that I don’t want a version of my life where she isn’t in it.
And wanting her in that sense means opening the door to the one thing I’ve spent my life keeping locked.
The day everything burned down.
CHAPTER 26
LA LA LA.
Scottie
There’s something different about being in my grandparents’ house after the cameras leave and the construction crew drives away. This sense of peace settles over me, almost making me feel like I can see myself here forever.
When I first got here, I didn’t have a plan.
Hell, I still don’t.
Do I finish fixing it up and sell it?
Do I take the money from the sale and show to buy in another town?
Or do I stay and let it become mine the way Nan said it could? Homes aren’t built from memory. They’re built from moments. I didn’t understand what she meant that day when we stood in the yard staring at a rusted swing. But standing here now, I think maybe this is what she meant. Not some lightning bolt recognition or a sudden rush of childhood memories.
Just the slow, steady layering of new ones.
The kind you choose.
