“Most teenagers care about how they look. I know I did. I was very aware that I didn’t fit in, in a
lot of ways. Wherever I could, I tried to blend in.”
“I don’t think I cared about blending in. It was more about feeling…” The doors open, and I guide
her onto the elevator, pushing the button for the lobby.
“More about feeling what?”
I lean back on the wall, frowning as I admit something I’m only just coming to realize. “Feeling
like I was worth something.”
Her face softens, and she reaches out, fingering the zipper of my jacket. “Why didyoufeel that
way?” I hear it in her voice, all the times she felt less than. Maybe it’s that shared experience and the
empathy in her voice that lets me answer truthfully.
“Because I thought that Ransom only let me into the family because of Jonas. I spent all this time
thinking I had to earn my spot and prove to him that it wasn’t a mistake taking me in.”
She frowns, searching my face. “How did you come to be a family? I don’t really know the story.”
The doors open to the lobby, and I guide her out, pulling her to the side as I reach for her jacket,
carefully zipping her up. She smiles up at me, bemused, but doesn’t stop me.
“I don’t think anyone’s zipped my coat up for me in thirty years…so many firsts.”
I force a smile when the reminder of how little she’s been cared for makes me want to hit
something, and thankfully she seems to buy it. I zip up too. We’ve got a rare sunny day, but the wind
coming off the lake is no joke.
“You really had to take care of yourself, didn’t you?” Wishing she had better parents won’t do
anything. Won’t fix anything. But I still do. If I could go back and give her a cookie-making, warm hug
of a woman for a mother, I would. She deserves to be loved like that. She deserves to understand how
amazing she is.
She shrugs casually, like it was no big deal. “Yes, I did. But it made me incredibly self-sufficient
and stubborn.”
“You say that like those are good things to be,” I tease. She rewards me with a halfhearted glare
and a casual swat to my stomach as we exit the building into a big plaza. Ransom bought this land a
decade ago, complete with an aging apartment building. The location on the waterfront was always
going to be a moneymaker, but when we opened up the sales for condos in our building, we set a
record. I’ve lived here for nearly five years, and not once have I done what we’re doing now.
