“Nan,” Tucker says, voice stern. “You can’t just?—”
“You kids want ratings or not?”
I lean to my side where Tucker stands. “Should we…I don’t know, take the hammer from her?”
He shakes his head. “There’s no stopping Nan if she’s determined.”
Nan cracks her neck. Like, actually cracks it. “All right. Someone tell me what damn wall I’m knockin’ down.”
Tucker places a hand on my shoulder. “I got this.” And then he walks to stand in front of her. “Nan, we are not knocking down a wall. But since you want to knock something down so bad, why don’t you help us get rid of this double sink?”
She pauses for a second, her free hand coming to her chin to think about it. “But I brought this thing.” She gestures to the hammer in her hands.
I actually feel bad for how disappointed she sounds.
“And we’re going to use it,” Tucker reassures her, and then points to the sink. “Want to help us destroy this instead?”
She eyes the sink and smirks. “Hell yeah!” She adjusts her grip and angles the hammer like she’s ready to charge. “All right, let’s remodel this bathroom the same way I do my life—with zero planning and maximum destruction.”
With that, she charges toward the double sink like she’s trained for this her whole life.
I slip out of the bathroom and let her have this moment. In the hallway, I feel like I can breathe again knowing the cameras aren’t on me and I’m not dangerously close to Tucker. I rest my palm against the wall and close my eyes for a breath, letting the noise of Nan’s demolition fade into something distant.
Straightening my spine, I take a few more steps down the hall, the floorboards dipping under my weight the same waythey’ve done since I first walked through this place. When I skim my fingers along the wall as I walk, they catch on something I didn’t notice before. I stop, staring at it with my head tilted to the side. I crouch down and notice a square cut out with a small metal pull ring I never noticed before.
I pull the ring slowly, revealing a shallow crawl space tucked in the wall. It seems to be a storage space of some sort, just wide enough to slide a box or two through and nothing more.
My heart starts to beat faster as I kneel lower and look around. My eyes land on a cardboard box. Reaching for it with shaky hands, I drag the dusty box toward me and pull it free from the wall. It isn’t labeled and the tape along the edges is brittle from age.
I gasp when I lift the lid and the first thing I see is a crocheted blanket. It’s small and folded into a neat square. The yarn is worn thin in places, the colors softened into a pale pink but the pattern hits me right in the chest.
This was one of my baby blankets.
I’ve seen dozens ofmybaby pictures—and so many of them have this blanket in them. Were we here in those photos? And why are there none with my grandmother in them?
When I pull it out, I find a ceramic mug under it. White with a tiny hand-painted sun on one side. The handle is cracked but carefully glued back together. I turn it slowly in my hands and lose my breath when I seemyname scribbled on the other side with backward letters and the year next to my name means I was in kindergarten when I made this.
Tears threaten to spill in my eyes becausethisis exactly what I was looking for. Something.Anythingthat makes me feel connected to this home. And it’s right here in my hands.
I look down again and find pieces of papers tied together with twine. Lifting them carefully, I turn them over, not wanting to pull the twine just yet and that’s when I notice it’s a stack of handwritten recipes. At the bottom of every one it saysMillie’sFavorite, I almost laugh because there has to be at least thirty or forty pieces of paper stacked together.
“So this is where you disappeared to.”
Tucker’s voice forces me to snap my head in his direction. I find him standing with both hands tucked into the front pocket of his jeans, his expression softer than I’ve seen it in a while.
“What did you find?”
I lift the blanket slightly. “A crawl space. I think it was used for storage. I don’t know how we missed it.”
He steps closer, crouching down beside me, careful not to touch anything. “Looks like someone hid the good stuff.”
“My grandmother,” I whisper, looking down at the blanket still in my hand. “I don’t remember her,” I admit. “I’ve been trying…” My words trail off, not ready to share any more than that.
Not that I don’t want Tucker to know how I feel about my connection to this place—or lack of connection. To admit all of that when I’ve been talking about making it shine again, but treating this house like a checklist—a timeline.
Being honest about that right here and now, feels like standing in a half-finished room with no walls to hide behind.
I look up at him, opening my mouth to change the subject when I find he’s already looking at me. Not the box or the blanket in my hand, but at me. A soft smile on his lips.
