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I don’t want to say anything stupid and ruin the moment, so I stay silent. He leads me to his black Jeep, and we’re off to find breakfast at two in the afternoon.
CHAPTER SIX
My muscles are exhausted from a long day of clearing out closets and boxing up items that are personal to my family. I wish someone else was doing this work. But at the same time, I don’t want someone else going through all my memories and deciding what gets kept or tossed. I just don’t want this to be something I have to do. I don’t want this to be my new reality. But here we are.
Sitting on the hardwood floor sorting through our memories is not only starting to take a toll on my mind but my body too. I pull out a box that was way in the back of the closet and pull the lid off it, unprepared for what I find inside.
Finding all our old sand toys causes my heart to squeeze in my chest. It’s silly to get upset over sand toys, but my mind flashes back to a time when we were all on the beach—Mom, Dad, Aiden, and me. I sniffle, blinking at the tears I hadn’t realized were escaping down my cheeks. I hear a noise behind me and rapidly begin wiping at my face.
“Audrey,” Derek says, making his way over to the closet. “You okay?”
“Yeah, I’m fine. Just clearing this out.” My voice is shaky, so he probably knows I’m anything but okay. I hope that he just goes on with whatever it was he was going to do. It’s late afternoon, so I’m not sure if he’s headed out already or just going to the beach.
He doesn’t leave, though. His footsteps continue in my direction.
“Audrey,” he says again.
I freeze and will him away from me. It doesn’t work.
“Look at me, please.”
I shake my head. “I’m fine.”
Derek lowers himself to the floor and sits beside me. There’s not a lot of space where I’m at, so our knees are touching. “Talk to me.” His voice is low, quieter than it needs to be, given that we’re the only two in the house.
I look over at him and attempt to smile. “What do you want me to say?”
It’s a lame attempt at humor and sees right through it.
“Talk to me. Tell me what’s got you so upset.”
“Nothing.”
“You’re crying,” he says, reaching his hand over and wiping a tear from my cheek.
I wipe at my cheeks with both hands and then show him the box. “Sand toys. I found sand toys in the closet, and it upset me.”
“Oh, Aud,” he says, pulling me in close. “Come here.”
“It’s silly. I know it is.” I sniffle.
“No, it’s not silly. You’re packing up a lot of memories. I’d be worried if none of them upset you.”
“Really?” I ask him.
“Yeah,” he replies, “Come here. Let me hold you.”
I freeze, unsure what to do. I don’t know that I can handle being this close to him. The toys have me so upset that I know if someone touches me or hugs me like that, the tears will come faster. I don’t want to break into uncontrollable sobs.
“I’m not going to do that,” I tell him, my voice shaking again.
“Please let me help you. I know I haven’t been much help getting this place boxed up, but I’d like to help you now, when I think it counts.”
I glance over and see his shoulders are slumped, his eyes frantically searching mine.
“The sand toys are from when we were little,” I say quietly. “I hadn’t seen them in years. It was the fourth of July, and we entered a kids sandcastle building contest. Dad had run out that morning and picked up some new shovels, buckets, and molds because he said we needed to be prepared. I remember my mom pretending to be annoyed by the whole thing, mostly because we already had a million sand trinkets and definitely didn’t need any more.” I sniffle and push away some more tears, and his arms wrap around me tighter. “We went out there and worked for hours together, just the four of us. It was blazing hot that day. There were so many trips into the water to cool off, but we never gave up.”
“And you won,” Derek finishes for me.
