For Andrea’s sake, maybe.
So someday when she’s ready, she can see and touch things that belonged to her ma, bringing her back in little memories of Abigail wearing a certain dress or reading a book or laughing in the light from the window as she turned, her fingers glittering with delicate silver rings.
Things weren’t always bad, once.
I fell in love with her when I was young and married her for a reason, even if those reasons wore thin real damn fast.
But it’s time to put this stuff away until Andrea’s ready.
Beyond time.
This heavy feeling knifes through me as I move, and I wonder if Andrea’s the only reason I kept this stuff.
Why the hell do I feel this ache, swiping the dust off the stacked boxes and hefting one into my arms?
Is this what letting go feels like?
If so, I’m ready.
I turn with my arms loaded up and step out into the hall—only to bump right into Peace.
She looks up at me, bouncing back, then touches her fingers to the side of the box, tracing something.
My eyes lurch open. She’s tracing my handwriting.
My jagged, angry Sharpie letters written so many years ago, blurred with rage. I’d been stabbing at the cardboard with the marker, trying not to be furious at Abby checking out on us the way she’d gone. Leaving no closure. And because it felt wrong to be pissed at the dead.
ABIGAIL – BOOKS
That’s all it says. Just those two words.
I know deep down it says a hell of a lot more.
Peace smiles sadly, all the flighty sweetness that makes her who she is tied up in those soft pink lips.
My heart thumps so hard she must hear it.
“Need a little help?” she asks, and my throat constricts.
“Yeah,” I say. “Think I’d like that a lot, darlin’.”
She doesn’t say anything else.
As much as she peels me open with those soft, understanding words, right now, it’s her silence that gets me.
She rests her hand on my arm, squeezing gently, then slips into the bedroom behind me and grabs a box.
Together, we make our way to the attic with the first load of memories boxed up tight.
Memories which suddenly don’t cut so bad at all.
* * *
With Peace’s help, it doesn’t take long to clear out the bedroom.
We don’t talk until we’re stripping old bedding and opening up the windows to let some light in, taking down curtains that have so much dusty fur on them I think they might damn well be alive.
“Sorry this place is such a mess,” I growl. “Rest of the house is plenty clean. This room, we just shut up under lock and key.”
“You kidding? This is nothing. That honey farm I lived on right outside Redding for a few months…I think I slept with the bees. They lived more in the wood of that rotted old house than inside their boxes.”
Can’t help but grin. “Been meaning to see about some beekeepin’ myself one day. Doc swears up and down I’ll get myself stung to death. I’m itching to prove him wrong.”
We share a smile over easygoing banter for once. It’s nice.
She’s impressed I can get a fitted sheet on seamlessly.
Boot camp discipline and attention to detail as a grunt never leaves a man, I guess.
I’m impressed she nearly kills herself taking down a pair of lace curtains, flopping back into my arms when her balance craps out.
The two of us keep working for a few hours to turn this vault of dead memories into a living space for Peace. Before long, it’s not too hard to breathe without choking on dust. The room comes alive, full of sunset light and the fresh smell of clean linens and brand new curtains.
There’s a little glimmer of pride in us both.
On an unspoken agreement and a little toss of her head toward the door, we dust ourselves off and head out into the late evening to fetch her things.
We take my Jeep, leaving her car at my place for obvious reasons.
One, I don’t want anyone to realize she’s coming back to the inn, if they’re watching for her—though if they’re spying at her cabin, they’ll see us getting out together. Whatever, I’m with her. I’m sure I can handle some gangly freak in a ski mask after taking down a whole group of lethal bandits months ago with nothing besides firecrackers, helping Doc’s tight-lipped ass.
Two, if anyone followed her today, then I want them to see her car at my place.
Let them know she’s mine.
Well.
Not mine-mine.
But damn it, she’s with me, and I ain’t letting a single thing happen to her.
We finish loading her stuff up pretty fast. There’s plenty of room in the back of my Jeep, enough to hold all the cases and folding things and suitcases she’d had in that Mystery Machine van of hers, and then some.