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I nodded, sipping the sweet liquid, hoping it would soothe my dry throat.
Nana’s eyes lost their focus as she looked out the window. “Maybe this will be good for you.”
“How is it good?” I asked.
Her gaze returned to me. “You’ll find closure. You can finally put your past behind you.”
“I have,” I said automatically. But the truth was, I hadn’t. I pushed it down deep. That was the opposite of dealing with it or forgiving my mother for abandoning us.
She gave me a pointed look. “You haven’t.”
I averted my gaze and changed the subject. “I can’t imagine you not living here.”
“Someone else will live here eventually,” Nana said.
The thought of that sent my heart racing.
Heavy footsteps sounded overhead. Then there was a thud.
Nana shook her head. “Go help them. Jake doesn’t know what to keep or what his children might want some day.”
I set the lemonade down and crossed the room to kiss Nana’s paper-thin cheek.
When I lifted my head, she grabbed my wrist. “It will be all right.”
I couldn’t bring myself to respond as I slipped out of her grasp. I crossed the room, my hand drifting over the wood railings to the second floor. A memory popped into my head of me racing down the steps as I rushed to catch up with Jake.
As I stepped onto the second-floor landing, I saw the door to the sewing room was open. It had been Jake’s when he lived here. A few boxes were already stacked in the middle of the room.
“Is this okay?” Ryan lowered two boxes to the floor.
“It’s fine.” But it felt like nothing would be okay again. The boxes were marked with black marker, indicating they were Jake’s or mine. I breathed a sigh of relief that he hadn’t started with the ones labeled Roxane, for my mother.
When I lifted the flap of a box, dust floated through the air, seemingly dancing in the light filtering through the window. I recognized books from my childhood stacked neatly, the spines facing up. I lifted each one, admiring the covers and the dog-eared pages. These books had been my escape as a child. All were fantasies about imaginary worlds with dragons and magic.
“I wondered what happened to those. Will you keep them?” Jake asked, dropping two more boxes on the carpet.
“Of course.” I couldn’t imagine giving them away. I’d save them for my future children.
“I’ll grab a couple of garbage bags for donation and trash.” Jake walked out.
Instead of returning to the attic, Ryan stood next to me, his arms crossed over his chest. “This is hard for you.”
“My whole life is in these boxes.” I sat back on my haunches.
Ryan shook his head, looking around ruefully. “If this were my family’s stuff, I’d junk everything.”
I glanced up at him in surprise. He’d been a constant in my life growing up, but he hadn’t talked much about his home life. “Why is that?”
His gaze met mine, and I sucked in a breath at the depth of pain I saw in them. “I don’t have a lot of good memories from home.”
I sighed, feeling weary, even though I wasn’t the one doing manual labor. “I don’t either. At least, not before I came to live with Nana.”
Each time Mom showed up for a visit, I couldn’t help myself from hoping she’d either stay or take me with her. It was a roller coaster ride of ups and downs, longing and disappointment. Jake and Nana held me together. I owed them everything.
Focusing on the task at hand, I wroteKeepon the box of books, and Ryan closed the flaps, moving it to the wall by the door. The next box was a stack of photo albums. Not opening them, I wroteKeep, and shoved it aside.
“You don’t want to look at them?” Ryan asked softly.
