And she’s right. The pool is huge.
We pass a big painting in the hallway, gold-framed, a woman in a blue dress standing at a window.
“Who is that?” Mary asks, leaning her head to the side as she stares at it.
“Her name was Isolde.” Valeria slides in next to Mary. “She was a woman who loved someone very much and was very brave about it.”
“Did she get a happy ending?”
Valeria tilts her head. Something moves across her face that I can't read yet. “Some stories don't have endings,” she says. “They just keep going.”
Mary considers this with the seriousness she applies to most things. Then she nods, satisfied, and takes my hand again, and we keep walking.
When we finish the loop of the downstairs—past the breakfast nook with its wall of shining windows and the living room with couches so soft it seemed immoral to sit on them—Valeria leads us up the stairs, hand gliding over the wood banister as if she wanted to gather every bit of this house into herself.
We reach a room at the end of the hallway of the second floor. “Mary, this is your bedroom. I do hope you like the color. I changed it three times because I just wasn’t sure which one you’d like.”
Valeria opens the door, and I’m sure I hear my little sister’s jaw hit the floor as she steps inside. Me? I’m scowling because it’s…well, pink. A lot of pink. Not the sharp, cheap pink of the group home bathroom, but something deeper and softer, like the inside of a flower. There are fairy lights strung alongthe headboard. A window seat with a cushion in a pattern of small white stars. A shelf already lined with books, their spines arranged by color. A little desk by the window with a lamp that casts a warm circle of gold.
Mary stops in the middle of the room and stands there for a long moment, very still, George pressed to her chest. Then she turns in a slow circle, taking it in from every angle, like she's trying to memorize it before it disappears.
I know that feeling. I recognize it. We've both been doing that since our parents died—memorizing good things while they're still here, because we understand now that good things don't always stay.
“Nazareth.” She breathes it, barely audible.
“Yeah,” I say, stepping in beside her.
“It's mine?”
I take her hand. “It's yours.”
She turns to Valeria, who has been standing quietly in the doorway behind me. “Did you really paint it three colors?”
Valeria smiles. “Four, actually. The first one was too bright. The second was too gray. The third was close but not quite right.” She tilts her head. “This one's calledantique rose.I thought it suited you.”
Mary looks like she might cry. She doesn't—she bites the inside of her cheek the way she does when she's trying to hold something in—but her eyes go very bright, and she presses George a little harder against her ribs.
I watch her standing in that room, under those fairy lights, with the window seat and the star-patterned cushion and the books lined up like a promise, and something inside me settles. I’ve been so worried about her ever since a car accident took our parents from us, so worried she’ll never be happy again. But right now, she looks pretty darn happy. And when she’s happy, I’m happy.
Footsteps come down the hall, and a boy appears. Maybe half an inch shorter, dark-eyed and lean, hands shoved in his pockets. He slows when he sees us but doesn't stop, like he'd clocked us from ten feet away and already decided how he felt about it.
“Samuel.” Valeria's voice shifts slightly—lighter, more careful than it's been all afternoon. “Come meet Nazareth and Mary.” She places a gentle hand on his shoulder. “This is Samuel, my son. He’s your age, Nazareth.”
There it is again, that weird feeling when she says my name.
I step up to shake his hand. Dad always said you make a good impression with a firm handshake. Samuel’s handshake is quick, dry, surprised. For a second, I think he might actually say something, but he just gives a half-smirk, shrugs, and lets his hand fall away.
Then I notice Mary.
She's gone completely still, George forgotten at her side, and she's staring at Samuel with her whole face—not the way she stared at Mrs. Capello, that full-body wonder, that tipping-toward-light. This is different. Quieter. She's just looking at him the way she sometimes looks at things she doesn't have words for yet.
Samuel glances at her. Mary immediately looks at the floor.
“Hey,” he says, to both of us, or neither of us.
“Hey,” she mumbles under her breath.
Valeria looks at the three of us and beams, as if the scene she’s been rehearsing in her head has unfolded perfectly.
