Chapter 4: Chapter 3

I stepped back, leaning against the small kitchen island in the guesthouse that had thankfully escaped any fire damage, to admire my artwork hanging over the fireplace in the living space. Then I burst out laughing. The dick flower was up in all its glory.

But it was so much more than inappropriate art. Lolli had known exactly what she was doing when she brought it for me today of all days. She knew I’d need to laugh and be reminded of the family that surrounded me.

Over the years, I’d had to find a way to hold both—the family I’d lost and the one I’d found—and be grateful for the time I had with them. Today, Lolli topped that gratitude list.

As if to punctuate that, my phone dinged. I swiped it up, seeing a group chat name and icon pop up. The name constantly changed, usually a result of Cope and Kyler trying to one-up each other or piss off our law-and-order eldest brother. Cope and Kyler had been getting into mischief since Kye came to live with us when he was sixteen.

Today, the group chat’s name was Don’t Tell Mom. That made me snicker as I slid my thumb across the screen.

COPE

How are the new digs? Ready for a rager?

My fingers flew across the screen.

ME

Like the time you guzzled peach schnapps and smelled like cobbler and rubbing alcohol for five days straight?

COPE

Don’t say peach. I’m still traumatized.

KYE

I’m the one who’s traumatized. You puked in my closet. When a girl came in asking for a peach inked on her ass, I started gagging.

A new message flashed on the screen.

Arden has changed the group name to Nonstop Notifications.

COPE

Harsh, A.

Our youngest sister, who had come to live with us when she was twelve, liked her solitude and didn’t appreciate being interrupted. Especially when she was working on a new art piece—and she almost always was.

ME

Put the chat on do not disturb. That’s what I do when Cope’s getting all needy. Like his millions of adoring fans aren’t enough.

ARDEN

Smart. Should’ve done that years ago.

COPE

Can you divorce your siblings? What are the legal ramifications of that?

ME

It means you won’t get any peanut butter poke cake the next time you’re home.

COPE

Cruel and unusual punishment, Rho.

I chuckled to myself, knowing I’d won that battle, and shoved my phone into my back pocket. I let my gaze roam over the rest of the small space. It was still mostly a disaster. Even though I didn’t have a ton of belongings, I still had stuff. And that stuff was currently in a mishmash of half-open boxes scattered around my living room.

I’d pulled out the important things. My coffeemaker. A skillet, a saucepan, a few plates, and some cutlery. A girl had to eat, after all. And no one wanted to see me uncaffeinated tomorrow morning.

But the most important of all had been a handful of worn books. Novels that contained shared journeys I’d taken with my dad. The Perks of Being a Wallflower, The Hunger Games, The Outsiders, and, of course, A Wrinkle in Time. They pulled me toward them as if they had their own gravitational force, and I let my fingers ghost over the titles’ cracked spines and yellowed pages.

The library had sustained some fire and water damage, but mostly smoke and soot stained the covers and the edges of the paper within. Over time, given how much I reread them all, most of that had worn away.

Only the last section of each book remained dusted with black flecks from the fire. Because as frequently as I revisited each one, I couldn’t seem to force myself to make it to the end. Of any of them. Something about the endings was too painful, too final, even if they were happy.

I let my hand fall, glancing around at the rest of the room. So many boxes. But they could wait.

Because I was itching to get a better look at the ol’ girl. After getting past the first tidal wave of memory, I realized I’d missed her—her intricate trim and steepled roof. I’d missed how it felt like home more than any other physical place, even Colson Ranch.

Moving away from the bookcase, I headed out the front door. The first glimpse of charred siding had me sucking in a breath, but I pushed on, stalking toward the house. The burned half was on the side closest to my guest house, so I’d have to get used to seeing it.

The few years I’d been forced into therapy, my shrink at the time kept saying over and over that I needed to face what had happened. Until Nora got outright furious one day and screamed at the man that I’d face it when I was ready and told him to stop being such a pushy bastard. That had been my last session with him. But her outburst had made me feel more loved than I could express.

And Nora was right. I needed to do this at my own pace. It might’ve taken me fourteen years, but I was here now. Ready.

My worn boots kicked up gravel and dust as I walked. Instead of looking at the house, I focused on the dried-up garden beds surrounding it. My mind instantly began drawing up plans, and I pictured them coming to life with poppies and lupine. I wanted an explosion of color everywhere I could root it.

Rounding the back of the house, I caught sight of the kitchen. Through the windows, I saw a bit of smoke damage but not much else. The same four stools stood sentry at the oversized island—the ones Mom and I had sat on the night it all happened. They were where I’d told her about that first kiss.

God, that felt like a lifetime ago. A fumbling press of lips in the dark of a closet in Owen Mead’s basement. I saw Felix around town now and then. He had that same sweetness to him that he did all those years ago. But it wasn’t something I’d ever truly know.

He’d tried back then. To be my friend, and to be more. He’d visited me in the hospital. Had gone to the memorial Fallon, Nora, and Lolli had arranged so I’d have a chance to say goodbye. But I’d never truly let him in. Eventually, he quit trying. But now, he stopped to say hello whenever he saw me and always gave me that warm, easy smile.

Taking a deep breath, I moved toward the house. I swore I could still smell the smoke in the air. Just a hint. It wasn’t something I’d ever miss.

I reached for the handle of one of the back French doors and simply let my hand rest there for a moment. A company my aunt had hired had tried their best to board up the place and cover the roof with a heavy-duty tarp. But when she realized any costs for repairs would be coming out of her pocket, she’d ceased helping altogether. The local sheriff’s department had been forced to oust the occasional person who tried to use it as a crash pad, but mostly, it had lain vacant all these years.

On a single exhale, I pressed on the knob’s lever. The movement was a bit jerky, the mechanism not used to it, but it was unlocked. I’d given Shep the keys so he didn’t have to wait around for me.

Slowly, I opened the door. This time, there was no denying the scent of smoke in the air. How it was possible after all these years, I didn’t know. Maybe it was baked into the walls.

Shep had assured me he had a guy who was a magician when it came to fire damage. Swore up and down, they’d bring the place back and help me come home again. But as I stepped deeper into the space, I wasn’t sure how that was possible.

Soot stained the walls to my right, making dark, inky swirls on the wallpaper that had once brought my mom so much joy. Those smoky patterns seemed to hypnotize me, pulling me deeper into the house and toward the worst of the destruction.

I ambled down the hallway, taking in every inch of damage and wondering about the small pieces that had magically seemed to escape the same way I had. Some tiny miracle that held no rhyme or reason as far as I could see.

When I reached the entryway, I turned to my left and felt as if a prizefighter had leveled a punch just below my rib cage. The library. My dad’s favorite place to hole up with a crime novel on the weekends. You could see exactly where the firefighters had stopped the blaze. The room was how I pictured my heart at times, half destroyed and half still beating.

Pressure built behind my eyes, and my throat worked to pull the tears back in as I took in the burned parts. All the thrillers that had been so well-loved were now nothing but ash. I bit the inside of my cheek. I’d give my dad back his library. And I believed he’d somehow see it as I stocked the shelves with John Grisham, Stieg Larsson, Truman Capote, and Patricia Highsmith. Along with novels we’d read together, saving whatever I could along the way.

Turning, I looked up the stairs. The landing above was half burned away, but the stairs, while soot-stained, looked steady enough. I stepped onto the first one, testing its strength. It held easily.

I climbed a few more with a desperate urge to see more. A breeze picked up, sending an eerie howl through the house. I knew it was because of the burned-out walls and smashed windows, yet a chill skittered down my spine.

But none of that stopped me from climbing. I told myself only two more steps, just to get a peek into the room that had held all my childhood dreams. Maybe I wanted to look into the girl herself. The one who’d thought a single kiss would change her life. And maybe it had, in a way.

“What the hell are you doing in here?” a deep voice snarled.

There’d been nothing but me and the eerie howl for the past ten minutes—nothing but me and the ghosts. So much silence that I wasn’t ready for anything else. I whirled around, my foot catching on the broken step above me just as a man’s dark blond head came into focus.

I had a moment to see panic streak across his blue-gray eyes and his tanned skin pale as my arms windmilled. And then I was falling.