Page 10 of Now to Forever (Life on the Ledge Duet #2)

Six

“What’s this?” Wren asks, nose scrunched and eyeliner-attacked eyes narrowed as she holds up a book. With a fish-man. And a half-naked woman. Called Hookered.

“A book,” I say, snatching it out of her hands and picking up the box she got it from—even I know she doesn’t need to be exposed to my nightstand box of tricks—and set it at the base of the spiral staircase. “Are you not familiar with the concept?”

“What is it?”

“Monster romance, what does it look like?”

“You read books about monsters?” Her eyes narrow. “Why?”

“They’re funny.”

Her face maintains a skeptical expression as she eyes the box. “Are they supposed to be?”

“I don’t care if they’re supposed to be .” I take several of Archie’s fish knickknacks off the shelf in the living room and put them into the box I’m packing. “Plus, it’s always a fun surprise to see where their dic—” She stares at me, hanging on every word. “—tionaries are.”

“My mom says you should feel something when you read,” she says, shifting her focus to pulling dishes out of the cabinets in the kitchen. Despite how hot it is today, she’s wearing a grey sweatshirt. “That’s why she writes poetry.”

“Yeah, well, that’s why she’s a mom,” I explain, picking up a decorative plate showcasing a painted little boy fishing with a cane pole and putting it in the donation box.

Molly sniffs around the room, stopping when she gets to my box of tricks.

“Your aptitude for parenting can be determined by what you read. Monster romance? No parenting skills. Poetry? Supermom.”

When I smile, she doesn’t, staring blankly at the mugs on the tiled kitchen counter.

The only sound between us is the Weezer record playing as I empty the bookshelf. When the last song ends and the musicless clicking starts grating on my last nerve, I ask, “So what kind of poetry does your mom write?”

“Acrostic.”

The laugh that bursts out of me dies when I realize she’s serious. “I thought acrostic poems were for, I don’t know, second graders.”

“Some people write more complex ones,” she explains, fidgeting with one of the mugs. “My mom writes the kind that tell a whole story. Some poets write them so the first and last letters of the lines spell something.”

“Impressive.” I don’t know if I mean it, nor do I know if it sounds more or less interesting than the sex authors can manage to think up in my monster books, but I let her traveling poet mom have her moment.

I put two birding books into a box then turn my attention to the furniture.

The coffee table—made of wood with an etched glass inlay—seems like a good place to start. I slip a pair of work gloves on.

“Are you ever going to get married?”

“No.” I grip the edge of the rectangular table, giving it a push—ugly thing is heavier than it looks.

The first step of renovating a house, I learned after hours of watching the internet, is to empty it.

And while there isn’t a ton in here—a couple shelves of books and tchotchkes, dishes in the kitchen, and a few paintings and pictures on the walls—the furniture is an obstacle.

It’s all so old and heavy, it’s as if the wood has been petrified.

“Why?” she demands. “Because you had bad parents?”

“Again with the questions—you should be a cop.” I push the table toward the front door; she mutters something under her breath.

“But.” I grunt as I start to work the table across the threshold of the door and onto the porch, noticing Molly’s head now fully in my box of fun at the base of the steps.

“Hey! Out of there, dog! Sit! Run! Go live somewhere else!” She ignores my shouts, continuing her deep dive.

Fucking dog. She listens to nothing I say.

I turn my attention back to Wren before giving a final shove of the table. “And I don’t think I would be a good wife. Or that I know how to find a good husband. Or that I care to find out about either.”

“Maybe you would if you didn’t read about monsters. ”

I pant out a tired breath and look at her through the doorway, narrowing my eyes. “Don’t yuck my yum, She Who Applies Eyeliner with a Paintbrush.” We exchange tit-for-tat looks. “If you’re going to talk shit about my monsters, I’m not paying you to help.”

“You’re not paying me.”

“You’re not helping.”

She studies me, like she’s not sure what to make of this conversation, but when a small smile tugs at my lips, the same happens on hers. She walks over to the record player sitting on the floor in the corner of the living room and digs through the box of records next to it.

“Why do you have these?” she asks, examining one record before exchanging it for another then another.

“They were my brother’s.” She decides on one and slips it out of its sleeve and onto the player before settling the needle in the groove.

I chuckle when Aerosmith starts rocking through the speaker.

“He loved music. He was a musician. Acoustic stuff with a guitar. He had one of those voices that was kind of rough and kind of smooth. Worn velvet.”

Her silence encourages me to keep talking. In a rare moment, I want to.

“No matter what he sang about, it all sounded sad. Like the music itself needed a high dose of antidepressants. I’d tease him about it—try to get him to lighten up.

Thought maybe he was trying to be some kind of moody hipster.

But now I think maybe . . .” My thoughts drift to Zeb—dark hair long enough he could tuck behind his ears and haunted eyes.

I knew he was using—Ford nailed it when he said it—and I fought him on it.

“Are you high?” I’d demand when he called, talking in tongues of nonsense.

“Come stay with me. I can find you a meeting or something.” He’d dismiss me .

“Nah. I’m fine, Scotty. Just having a little fun.

Taking the edge off.” And then I’d drop it.

Because the truth was, what did I know about drugs?

I’d only ever drank and smoked weed; I wanted to believe him.

Desperately. Wanted him to be fine. And even more, I didn’t want to push him away.

Between our mother being what she was and our dad being a timebomb more gone than home, Zeb was all I had.

“Maybe what?” Wren asks.

“Maybe that’s just who he was,” I finish. “Sad.”

“What happened to him?”

I shimmy-shove the table to the side of the porch.

“The sadness won.”

Steven Tyler’s voice belts out “Dream On” in our silence, and for once, Wren doesn’t press me for more. Based on the barbed-wire lump in my throat, there’s no more to give anyway. He died a death I didn’t stop and don’t understand.

She thumbs through the box of records again. “Which ones are yours?”

I blink.

“Like which music do you like? You can’t only listen to stuff someone else picked your whole life.”

My chin pulls back. “Why?”

“Because it’s weird.”

In my silence, she raises her eyebrows .

“I like Miranda Lambert,” I finally tell her, grunting as I start pushing a chair toward the door.

She thumbs through the records again. “I don’t see any.”

“I don’t have any.” Her judgmental mouth opens to say more teenage bullshit, but I shut her down. “I’m on a budget. You done in the kitchen?”

On the porch with the chair, I put my hands on my hips, blowing out a winded breath as I look through the doorway at her.

“The cabinets are empty, most fit in the box,” she says, moving from the records to pat Molly, who has taken a break from rummaging to nap in a sun-painted puddle on the floor. “And I should go.”

She breezes by me down the porch steps and to her bike.

“Good riddance,” I mutter.

Over her shoulder as she pedals away, she calls, “See you tomorrow.”

I watch her until she’s out of sight, not sure what to make of her. The makeup, the clothes, the poet mother, and the weed in the shed. She doesn’t swear and speaks like a straight A kid yet looks like she might run off with a circus full of emo clowns. A complete paradox.

And not my problem.

Over the next hours I pack up the rest of Archie’s belongings.

I finish the kitchen—the few pots and pans Wren couldn’t fit in the box.

In the downstairs bedroom covered in wood paneling, I take down creepy framed art of Norman Rockwell–style paintings of kids fishing, their skin so creamy white they look like little ghosts in every scene.

In the closet, there’s a stack of old sheets and blankets.

Most of it I pitch, but there’s one quilt that looks like it has a history.

I keep it, along with one framed photo: the same one that was in the back of Lydia’s album of her and Archie holding a baby.

I don’t know them—not really—but the smile on their faces as they look at the child feels like home.

I’m not the sentimental type, but I can’t get rid of it; maybe I’ll call Lydia and give it back to her. After all, it’s her family, not mine.

A tap on the window pulls me from the photo; on the other side, a mostly bald man with a combover and wild eyes smiles and waves before stepping to fill the propped-open front doorway.

I note the gigantic pit stains on his light blue button-down shirt and the bright white shoes that peep from the bottom of his navy dress pants. Who in the sweat-soaked hell is this?

“Scotty?” He grins. “Vince Allers. We emailed about listing the place.” His eyes dart around. “What a diamond in the rough!”

Recognition strikes: the real estate agent.

“Hi.” I set the framed photo in the Keep box and close the distance between us. The sweat glistening on his forehead makes me wonder if he ran here from another continent. “I wasn’t expecting you in person.”

“Who can resist?” He pulls a handkerchief out of his pocket and blots his forehead. When he notices me watching, he waves it around like a flag before shoving it in his pocket. “Hyperhidrosis,” he explains. “I sweat like a whore in church.”

Okay .