Page 27 of Things We Left Behind

“I entertain myself by binge-­watchingTed Lassoand cheering for Rupert the villain.”

Sloane tried and failed to smother her laugh. “Damn it.”

It was a headier thrill than anything I could recall in recent history. That was pathetic.

“Hold up. Are those twoactually smilingat each other?” Lina demanded.

“My God. It’s a snowstorm miracle,” Stef said, making the sign of the cross as Jeremiah slung an arm around his waist.

“I better call into the station and see if some kind of asteroid is about to hit us,” Nash joked.

“I don’t like this,” Knox said, giving me the evil, snowy eye.

“I love it,” Naomi insisted, hooking her arm through his.

“Har har. You guys arehilarious,” Sloane said, taking a deliberate step back. She turned her back on me and took that warm feeling with her.

Knox and Nash insisted on spending the night after the girls had commandeered the dogs and taken them next door for the night.

It was midnight. Knox was passed out on the twin bed in the bedroom staged for a boy while Nash slept on the pullout couch in my office.

Anyone would have thought from the long, impassioned goodbyes they shared with Naomi and Lina that they were going off to war.

What was it about love that turned men into simpering idiots?

I considered myself lucky that it was at least one thing I didn’t have to worry about.

I turned my attention back to the financial records in front of me. The digital fundraising platform would make an interesting addition to my “evil corporate empire.” I saved my notes to the cloud and fired off an email to my assistant to add a meeting with the platform partners to my calendar.

I took off my glasses and rubbed my bleary eyes with both hands.

I wanted to go to bed. To fall, exhausted, into a dreamless sleep. But I couldn’t. Not yet. Not with Sloane’s bedroom lights still on, glowing warm and gold like a beacon as the snow continued to fall.

It was a habit worse than smoking in my opinion, not going to bed until Sloane’s lights went dark. It was a compulsion that did me no favors, considering the woman was a bookworm who read past midnight most nights. I glanced down at my copy ofThe Midnight Librarynear my elbow and wondered if that was something else I’d give up once I finally sold this place.

I was pathetic, secretly sharing a bedtime as if timing my lights-­out with hers somehow ensured that she was safe. The sooner I sold this house and cut ties, the sooner we’d both be free.

The floodlight in Sloane’s backyard lit up the winter wonderland, and I was on full alert as I leaned forward to peer out the window.

There she was.

She’d changed into yet another pair of pajamas and topped them with a dark, bulky coat and bright red snow boots. I watched as she trudged purposefully out into the yard, willing her to stop before she was lost to me behind the hemlock and clump of arborvitaes.

I rose from my chair and held my breath. She paused, still in view, and I relaxed.

Sloane tilted her head to the sky and spread her arms wide. Then she pitched backward, falling flat on her back. My muscles coiled reflexively, ready to run downstairs and out the door until I realized she was moving. Her arms and legs were working in a sweeping motion. In and out. In and out.

I watched mesmerized as Sloane Walton made a snow angel.

I pressed my palm to the cool glass.

Take care of my girls.I heard Simon’s words as clearly as if he’d spoken them aloud.

It wasn’t his fault. He didn’t know the effect his daughter had on me. How dangerous she was to me. How fatal I could be to her.

She was sitting up now, head tipped back. I wondered if she was thinking of Simon too. If that was yet another tie that unfairly bound us together. In a moment of weakness, I brought my hand to the window and traced her figure with my fingers on the glass.

I saw it before she did, the distant orange streak of light in the sky. A shooting star.