Her sweet smile cuts me right to the quick. “We?”
“We. Always.” I kiss her. “And we have that baseball diamond dedication tomorrow.” It’ll be like handing off a baton from my dad to me.
“I didn’t pack up much of the house. A lot of it belongs to you and your brothers.”
I press my lips to her forehead. “I was thinking we can redo the house. Make it ours and maybe redo the rooms as guest rooms.” In case my brothers ever visit.
“You want to get rid of the blue cabinets?”
“We keep what you want of your sister’s, and I’ll do the same with Dad’s. But those cabinets? One hundred percent.”
She laughs and drops her legs. I hate pulling out of her, but she’ll be mine all night tonight. I pull my pants up and collect her clothing.
“Your mom’s table is in the shop.” She puts her bra on. “If you want to bring that into the house.”
“Yeah,” I say roughly. “I would.” Dad saved it, and that decreases some of my lingering anger toward him.
My shirt is on the floor. When I take a step toward it, something skitters across the hardwood. It’s probably a pen. But when I stoop to get my shirt, I find a USB drive, the same kind Dad used before Bowen and I upgraded everything.
I pick it up.
Meredith steps into her jeans and hops off the desk. “What’s that?”
“Likely more files that I have to go through.” I toss the drive onto the desk. I can get to that later. “I’ll see if it opens and then hit up Bowen if it doesn’t. It’s not like there’ll be any life-changing information on it. Just more backups.”
Once she’s got her shoes on, I lead her downstairs and into the pleasant evening. The first of many.
FIFTY-TWO
MEREDITH
I finish wiping off the large wooden table Calder’s grandfather made for Julia. Now it’s ours, placed in the kitchen where it should be, and hopefully, another generation will get to share meals around it.
The front door crashes open. “Meredith!”
I jump at the urgency in Calder’s voice. I barrel into him at the entry to the kitchen. A gasp bursts out of me at what’s in his hands.
I grab Holly’s camera as he holds it out to me. It’s warm, like it’s been sitting in the sun for days. At this point, it’s been weeks. Calder moved in two weeks ago, and it’s been more than two months since the accident.
“Where did you find it?”
“Next to the shop. Sitting beside some old scrap metal.” He looms next to me, inspecting the camera as I do.
I frown at the cracked lens. It looks rough, like it got tossed out the car and clattered on the pavement. “You think she set it down and forgot about it before they went driving?”
“I don’t know how else it would’ve gotten there.”
No saying how long.
I try to turn it on, but nothing happens. I open the SD card slot. “That’s weird. It’s empty.”
“Could be why she forgot it?”
I shrug. I have Holly’s camera, like I wanted, and in a way, it feels like I have a piece of her back. Calder and I finally packed away hers and Ransom’s belongings, donating what we didn’t keep, and what his brothers, Sawyer, or Carlos didn’t want. Now I have the camera, but the pictures were what I wanted. I wanted to see the last of what she was shooting.
“I’m glad you found it.”
“Me too.” He drops a kiss into my hair and hugs me close, like he senses my disappointment.
