AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Wow,” Ryan murmured as we stepped inside. He scanned the huge foyer with glassy eyes. “It looks amazing.”
“Thanks bro,” said Bryce.
“No really,” Ryan reiterated. “The last time I was in here… there was scaffolding everywhere, and there was…”
He choked up again, and Roderick took his hand. Up the grand staircase we went, and down the hallway. Ryan’s gaze was everywhere, burdened by the weight of a thousand memories. Occasionally his mouth broke into a shuddering smile, and I knew many of those memories were good.
Roderick opened the door to Madison’s room and we all stepped inside. Rather than start crying again, Ryan somehow held it together.
“You kept her stuff,” he sniffed.
“Yes.”
“Exactly the way she kept it,” said Camden. “Nothing’s changed.”
“And nothing ever will change,” added Bryce. “This place has fifty-five rooms to explore, furnish, and decorate. But not this one. Never this one.”
Roderick was kneeling now, and he pulled something out from under the bed. It was a wooden box, elaborately decorated. A small brass key protruded from the lockplate on the front center.
“I found this a few weeks ago,” he said, “when I came in here one night. It belonged to Maddy, but it belongs to you now.”
Ryan took the box with trembling hands, and Roderick helped him open it. Inside were a mess of loose photographs. Pictures of Ryan and his sister when they were young, and of their parents too. He flipped through them, and started crying all over again. There were holidays. Birthdays. Summer vacation photos of some random lakehouse, with their little family swimming and playing and jumping into the water.
“Oh…” Ryan murmured. “Oh wow.”
The photos were tiny windows into the past. A glimpse of happier times, of memories that might’ve been forgotten if they hadn’t been captured on film.
“I didn’t even know she had these,” Ryan croaked. He was smiling. Laughing. Crying. “Oh my God, this is amazing.”
“I know you and Maddy lost your parents when you were still young,” Roderick croaked. “But that doesn’t mean you’re alone now.”
A hand slid over Ryan’s shoulder. I almost didn’t realize it was mine.
“You’re never alone,” I whispered softly. “Not while you have this place. Not while you have us.”
I squeezed him and the tears still fell. Eventually he dropped everything back in the box and turned to face us.
“Do you really mean that?” he asked, looking from face to face.
Bryce hugged him so hard they nearly both fell over. Camden hugged them both.
“Always,” one of them murmured. “You’ve had three brothers all along.”
And a sister… I thought to myself. Tears streaming down my own cheeks. He might not know it yet, and it might be too early to accept it. But in time…
I enveloped them all with my outstretched arms.
In time he will.
Epilogue
KARISSA
“So… everything’s set?”
Bryce walked alongside me, down the carpeted hall we’d walked so many times before. This time we passed through a new door, and into another hallway bustling with people. They pulled luggage carts, left and right. They paused to chat in the alcoves and laugh in the doorways.
