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Giving up, she resumed bumping her head against the door when a voice cut short her head banging session.
“Is there a problem?”
She shrieked and spun around to find Landon at the bottom of the steps peering up at her.
Had the man watched her knock her noggin against the door like she’d lost her marbles?
What did it matter at this point?
He’d already seen her lose her shit over eight cents and steal a tray of bonbons while dressed as a disheveled hobo. A little nightly headbanging had to be par for the course.
She rubbed her forehead. “I didn’t hear you get back.”
He started up the stairs with a duffel bag slung over his shoulder. “You changed?”
“Yeah, I thought I’d throw your shirt in the laundry—where clothes are washed.”
OMG!Was she having a stroke, or had she totally lost her mind?
“Is Aria okay?” he asked.
“I think so. I gave her a bath, and now she’s supposed to be putting on her pajamas.”
“She locked herself in?” he asked as a sharpthunkcame from her room.
They zipped to the door.
“Aria, what are you doing in there?” Landon called, trying the doorknob. “Are you hurt?”
The pitter-patter of feet rippled from the other side, followed by the click of the lock disengaging. The hinges whined as the door opened a few inches, and Aria peeked out.
“What happened in there?” Landon pressed.
“Uncle Landy, you’ve got to see this,” the girl replied, awe coating her words as she opened the door.
But before they could set foot in the room, the child’s attire rendered them slack-jawed.
“What are you wearing, Aria? Is that Harper’s…” Landon stammered.
Oh dear!
“Yep,” she answered, taking in the beaming child. “It’s what you think it is.”
The kid had not only raided her closet, the little snoop had rifled through her bottom dresser drawer reserved for Bonbon Barbie’s attire.
But that wasn’t the only eye-catching piece of her pj ensemble.
The top portion of her sleeping attire had come from the Landon Paige box. The child sported a T-shirt with Landon’s face plastered across the front.
“I found a hair clip to make the tutu fit around my belly,” Aria announced as she lifted the hem of the Landon Paige T-shirt to reveal the cinched waistline.
But the outfit was nothing compared to the foreboding pile in the center of the room. Empty boxes and plastic crates sat empty around the perimeter. Journals, pictures, and posters littered the center of the bedroom. Aria had dragged every box and storage container out of her closet, and as she’d suspected, the kid had gone to town, sifting through the items.
Remain calm. It can’t be that bad.
It had been years since she’d looked inside those boxes. Sure, a few contained Heartthrob Warfare memorabilia, but perhaps there wasn’t that much stuff. There was a good chance most of the keepsakes were school items like yearbooks and art projects.
She approached the pile like a soldier advancing on the enemy, and her worst nightmare became a reality.
