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“Like a secret agent?” he asks, and I chuckle when my phone starts ringing again.
“You should answer it. She’s probably freaking out,” Valarian states. I sigh and quickly answer it.
Everly's voice comes through the speaker. “Uh, where are you taking our son?” she asks. Valarian snickers.
“Father-son outing. Where are you?”
“I just got home. Zoe went into heat, so I had to call Marcus. Luckily, Macey is going to take Casey for the night because I feel exhausted today. Damn wet weather always makes me tired!”
“Well, we should be home before dinner,” I tell her before turning the car around at the roundabout and heading for the storage locker.
“Where are you taking him? It's pouring, Valen; not suitable weather to be out and about! I heard on the radio it's going to get worse overnight, too!” Everly screeches through the phone.
“Father-son outing,” I repeat, and she growls. I glance at Valarian in the mirror before pressing a finger to my lips. He giggles and nods.
“Fine, I’ll start dinner, I guess. Oh, can you grab more milk and coffee on your way home? Oh, and Oreo ice cream?”
“Oreo ice cream?”
“Yeah, I feel like ice cream.”
“But it's raining?” I ask her.
“Just get the ice cream, Valen!” she says.
“Fine, I’ll go grocery shopping too, then. I love you,” I tell her.
“I love you too. Don't forget my ice cream,” Everly says, hanging up.
The rain has eased off a little by the time we reached the hotel, but the parking lot is flooded, and the wind is horrendous. I drive around the back of the hotel, pulling up behind the event room where the storage locker is before grabbing the spare key from my glove box. The trees are bent over from the wind whistling past the car, and the storage locker door rattles loudly. Yeah, I can't take Valarian out in that. I sigh, not wanting to get out in this weather either.
“Yellow box?” I ask while turning to look at Valarian sitting in the back.
“Yes, it’s in the brown cupboard, unless Mom moved it. It has boxes stacked in front of it. Maybe call and ask her.”
“No, this is a surprise. You can't tell your mother,” I remind him, and he nods.
I turn the car off and hold my pinkie out to him. “Pinkie, promise?”
“I can keep a secret,” Valarian whines, but wraps his little pinkie around mine.
“And it isn't a secret; it's a surprise. You don't keep secrets from us.”
“Isn't that the same thing?” Valarian asks.
“No because I’ll be telling her—well,askingher—so it’s a surprise.”
“Sounds like a secret to me!” Valarian says, and I don't bother arguing with him. The kid would win.
“Wait here. I don't want you to get wet. The last thing I need is your mother going off at me for getting you sick,” I tell him before shoving the door open and rushing out toward the storage locker.
It takes me a good thirty minutes of moving boxes before I get to the cupboard and find the yellow box he mentioned at the bottom of it. Taking the lid off, I nearly choke on my spit as I pull it out and wipe off the dust. Tears brim in my eyes as I chuckle. I always wondered what happened to this ugly thing. I made it in wood class the first year of high school and gave it to my father. Opening the lid, I see my name burned into the wood. Dad must have given it to her. I thought he threw it out.
It has a huge, gaudy-looking wooden flower on top. We were making Mother’s Day boxes. Growing up, I always hated Mother’s Day because I didn’t have mine around, so I always gave them to Dad. However, it’s definitely broken, and I can see Everly had used superglue to put the splintered wood back together. Some bits are still broken and have gaps where she couldn’t glue the pieces back together in it.
Biting my lip, I now know it wasn’t the jewelry Everly was upset about. It was because she knew Mom treasured the box she kept the jewelry in. She had to have known, or she wouldn’t have put it back together because it’s the ugliest box I’ve ever seen and definitely not a work of art.
Suddenly, I feel glad I’m an Alpha because I’m not going anywhere with my carpentry skills, that’s for sure. But she kept it. All these years, and she kept it. I chuckle and grab a towel, wrapping it around the box before tucking it under my arm and rushing back to the car. Opening the door quickly, I place it on the passenger seat before rushing back to lock the shed back up.
