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Mia laughed and shook her head. “I’m being told that a lot lately. Guess I should take that advice.”
She went to her office and started to get to work. Her phone went off and she reached to see a text from Cal saying that he had a great few days and thanked her.
Her eyes started to fill with tears. He’d have no idea how much that meant to see that. Whether he was just saying it or not, it was what she needed to hear.
26
FEEL GUILTY
At the end of January, Mia was upstairs at Cal’s working out.
For the past month, she’d been staying at his house more and more. Probably close to half the time.
She found she was comfortable there and wished it were her place but wouldn’t even consider moving in full time though there were times she wondered if Cal wanted to ask her.
The person who thought things to death was trying not to do that, but that still didn’t mean she was going to jump fast either.
When the treadmill stopped, she got off and wiped the sweat off her brow. She had missed working out for years and was glad to find the time to get back into it. Mainly when she was staying with Cal.
She was getting ready to go back downstairs to shower when she heard a noise.
She stopped to listen again but didn’t hear anything. Then when she went to walk downstairs, heard it again.
She hoped it wasn’t a mouse. She should wait until Cal returned and tell him about it but found herself walking into the bathroom up there and flipping on the light. She didn’t see or hear anything else.
It must be her imagination. When she walked out, she heard it again and went into that spare bedroom up there. There wasn’t a bed in there. Not anything at all other than a few boxes of things.
She flipped that light off and took a step when she heard it again and then walked over to the closet and opened the door.
She could see more boxes in there too after she turned that light on and she just started to move them around to see if she could see any evidence of anything.
One was open and she noticed on the top there was an old school jersey.
She pulled it out and smiled, thinking these were boxes of things from his house as a kid. Funny how it never occurred to her about those things. She had stuff at her parents’ house too. She was positive her parents would give them to her when she had her own house.
She hoped Cal didn’t mind, but she started to pull a few more things out and laughed. She found his yearbook and flipped through some pages until she found pictures of him and Brian. It was a good thing that Cal was out at the liquor store. She was almost starting to feel guilty.
She went to put everything back and noticed another item on the bottom. It looked to be a video game system, not opened and there was a sticker on it, the handwriting faded. It was for Cal signed by Mom and Dad.
Oh my God. How had he been able to keep that? It must be his mother had bought it before everything happened. It had to be unless Jack went back and got it.
Not that it mattered, but it was here and never opened.
Mia sat on the floor and started to cry. He couldn’t open it, but he couldn’t get rid of it either and she realized just how conflicted he had to be.
After a few minutes, she got up and wiped her face. She had to pull it together. As much as she wanted to tell Cal what she found, she wouldn’t.
It seemed to her she’d pushed him enough.
She went downstairs after everything was put away as she’d found it and took a shower.
When she was walking out of Cal’s bathroom, she almost jumped out of her skin to see him standing there.
He started to laugh at her. “What’s so funny?”
“You. You’re not normally that skittish. Sorry.”
“It’s fine,” she said. “I went up to work out. I heard this noise up there. I looked around in the bathroom and bedroom thinking it might be a mouse or something, but I didn’t see anything. I figured I’d better tell you.”
