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Andthatis why Hallie wanted to move out.
I chuckled but didn’t say anything more, letting her step ahead of me and lead the way inside. The house was just about three thousand square feet, which seemed enormous for Hallie and Iris, but… Halliedidhave a lot of stuff.
“That stuff goes in my room.” A little finger tapped on my forearm, catching my attention as I stood at the bottom of the stairs.
“You mean all this?” I jostled the random shit in my arms, wiggling an eyebrow at her.
Iris giggled. “Yeah! Don’t mess it up. Come on, I’ll show you where to put it.”
“Lead the way.”
She thundered up the stairs like she was on a mission, and despite being like five times her size, I struggled to keep up with her. Iris was quick, and I wondered where she got that from. Honestly, the fact that Hallie was so shut down aboutwhoIris’s father was made me wonder what kind of shit she had gotten herself into in San Francisco.
My boots thudded across the hardwood floors that had been freshly cleaned, compliments of Jeff’s property management team. I followed the kid to the second door on the left before she turned the knob and pushed it open.
“This is my room!” She squealed, clapping her hands together. The guys had already moved her bed in, though it was unmade. She also already had her dresser, bookshelf, vanity, and nightstand in. It was…cute.
I sat the armful of decorations on the bed, pausing to see a few pictures of Hallie and Iris in the mix. One was of Hallie holding a tiny baby—who I assumed was Iris—at the hospital. The Hallie in that picture was the Hallie that I had said goodbye to, her blonde hair styled with sideswept bangs. She looked so young, but also happy as her face glistened with sweat. Something stirred in my chest, but it was drowned out by the jealousy I felt…
Whatever guy was there for that was a lucky son of a bitch.
“Will you help me hang these up? Mom is going to be busy unpacking all her stuff, and I want my pictures hung up.” Iris was standing on the other side of the full-sized bed, batting her little eyelashes at me. “Please.”
Jesus, she’ll be a heartbreaker one day.
“Yeah, sure.” I shrugged. “I can help you hang this stuff up.”
“I have some more stuff in that box, too.” She pointed to a large box she had been working on opening, a weak smile on her face. “Granny says that I’m just like Mom. We both collect a bunch of junk.”
I laughed, shaking my head. “There’s nothing wrong with that. I have the opposite problem. I never hang onto anything, really. It’s almost like I’ve been alive for a few decades with nothing to show for it.”
“That sounds really sad,” Iris’s brows furrowed. “Maybe you should start a treasure box or something.”
“A treasure box?”
“Yeah,” she nodded, returning to the cardboard moving box and rummaging around inside of it. “My mom has one just like it, and we put stuff in it that means a lot to us. You know, like sentimental stuff—that’s what she calls it.”
I’d like to know what’s in her box…
“Here,” Iris continued, setting a shoebox down on the bed. “I’ll show you what kind of stuff I keep, so that you get some ideas.”
I smile, stifling a laugh as I took a lesson from an elementary school-aged kid. “Okay, show me what you got.”
She giggled, flipping the lid open. “See.” Iris began to pull things out and lay them on the bed. I swallowed hard as most of the things were more pictures of herself and Hallie. I don’t know why the pictures were causing me to feel so many emotions, but seeing glimpses of Hallie’s life after me had me feeling some kind of way that I couldn’t put into words.
“Where was this?” I asked, pointing to a picture of Hallie’s arms wrapped around Iris, mountains in the background.
“Oh, Mom took me to Colorado one summer,” she said, shrugging her shoulders. “It was a lot of fun, but she got sick when we got real high up—she called, uh, alti-alti-something sickness.”
“Altitude sickness.” I chuckled, shuffling through a few more pictures, my head starting to spin the more I saw the life she lived.
And how happy she looked.
Part of me always regretted not telling her the truth about everything but seeing the pictures—the ones of her smiling with Iris as they went on adventures—confirmed that I had made the right choice. She deserved to live the life she wanted, and I couldn’t imagine what it would have been like had she stayed…
Other than I probably wouldn’t have gone to prison.
“How do you know my mom?” Iris asked, bringing me back to reality.
