Her body shakes, but she holds it in. “That’s rich to say, coming from a guy who didn’t shed a single tear yesterday either.”
“I had a long time to get used to not having him around.” I press a kiss to her bare shoulder. “I’m sorry about your sister.”
Weeping takes over. She trembles and shakes as she cries, and I just hold her. Maybe a few of those tears she accused me of not shedding squeeze out too. Meredith is hurting, and dammit, I ache because of it.
“I miss her so much.” She draws in a shuddering breath and reaches for a tissue on the nightstand, but she returns to the tidy cove we’ve made.
“Tell me about her.”
She sniffles and tosses the tissue onto a pile she’s already made by the box. When she lets out a long exhale, I expect her to brush me off or ignore the request entirely.
“She was a homebody.” She swipes at her cheek with the back of her hand. “I think she was, uh, intimidated by everything that happened. But before that, she was always working on the house in Rolla.” That’s where Mama was from. The other corner of the state. She grew up with Holly, and Meredith spent the first part of her childhood there. “Having movie and popcorn nights. She’d talk to Julia and tell me about you guys. She really loved your mom. But maybe…maybe when she came to help, she was already half in love with your dad.”
“She knew him that well?”
“She knew him through Julia. How well he took care of her, and of you three. She’d grown up with a dad who purposely lost jobs so he didn’t have to pay our mom child support. Julia always gushed about what Ransom did for her and you guys, and I think Holly was wistful about how welcomed and looked after Julia was here. Our house was run-down. Holly couldn’t work a lot with me around, and our mom and my dad didn’t send us much money. My sister couldn’t afford to hire anyone to help around the house. You know those jokes about sons holding theflashlight for their dads and their dads yelling at them about how they’re messing that up?”
I smile, my mouth against her warm skin. “No, but I’ve had plenty of those experiences.”
A soft laugh leaves her. “I can hear Ransom now.”
“‘Can’t you see where the bolt is? Shine the damn light on it,’” I mimic in a gruff voice. “Then he’d put his head right in the way.”
“Holly was like that about the how-to videos. ‘Rewind that, Mer. What’d he say? Hush up now—I can’t hear.’ She was a good sister, and she was more like a mom to me than mine ever was. But I think…” She sighs. “She wasn’t a very loyal best friend in the end.”
“People are complicated.” I don’t want to delve into the issues we’ve already lived through. I didn’t like Holly Winslow, but her sibling is starting to be a different story. “Tell me more about her as a sister.”
“You don’t have to do this, Calder.”
“Tell me, or did you forget I’m McBossy?”
This time, her body shakes from a chuckle. “Fair. Um…well, she painted this room to cheer me up when I moved back after my breakup with Tanner.”
“Did it help?” I ask dryly. The room is really bright.
“McBossy, are you hinting that you don’t like the sunset motif?”
“I like it if you like it.”
“I do.” She falls quiet. “It was what I needed to cheer me up. She and Sawyer helped me move out of my place with Tanner. Ransom too. I told them to behave.”
“Did they?” I hope not. Dad probably wanted to beat the guy’s ass like I want to.
“To remind him of being the Car-Alarm Humper, they set off their car alarm before they pulled away. Let it blare for at least a minute right in front of his house.”
A low chuckle starts in my chest and grows. I could get behind Holly Winslow for that display of passive-aggressive behavior.
She giggles. “Did you have Jed Cook for a teacher?”
“No, he was after my time.”
“He got fired for making social-media videos complaining about his students. As one of the top four in my class, I had to give a senior speech.”
There’s a core memory unlocked. “I had to give the same speech.”
“I bet all of you did. And none of you probably chose the theme ‘unexpected,’ using examples in your speech of how our graduating class met a lot at the funeral home because of the bat infestation at the school. Or that our gym teacher got fired for going viral.”
“Someone was upset about that?”
