Page 32

KEENE

A s I left the library, I blew out a hard breath and forced myself to screw my head on right.

But damn, that had been…weird. For a few seconds there, I had wanted to kiss Waverly Frank. And I mean, I’d wanted to fucking kiss her. Which was…

I shook my head. Actually, it was on par with how the rest of the day was going. Everything had felt odd since the moment I’d woken up.

Needing a break from all things unsettling and peculiar, I turned my phone back on and checked the screen out of habit because that was natural, normal behavior, only to realize I had six voicemails and thirty-five text messages.

Fuck, I’d forgotten I was still avoiding all avenues of communication with the entire group. But that only made everything weird again.

Dammit.

Frowning through the list, I skimmed names.

My most persistent text bomber had surprisingly been Hope with an even dozen, followed by Thane with six, then Parker with four.

Both Union and Oaklynn had sent me three each, then Ivey and his girl Faith copied each other with two a piece, and the rest had just popped in with one message.

Except for Younger. He hadn’t sent me anything.

Which was why Alec was my guy.

He knew to leave me alone when I needed a minute to calm down.

A minute to step back and view the situation from a broader angle.

But thinking of Waverly’s advice only made me remember how big and brown and fucking intoxicating her eyes had been in the library. Which just wouldn’t do.

With a sigh, I shoved the phone back into my pocket without reading or listening to a single message because I just wasn’t ready yet. Still too close to it.

Except more of Waverly’s words kept haunting me as I strode to my Jeep.

Did he have to apologize?

You two shared a decade’s worth of friendship …

Wait. How the fuck did she know how long Ohrley and I had been friends?

Realizing the two of them had some kind of secret friendship away from the group annoyed me.

She was supposed to be my outside friend, dammit.

I’m the one who irritated her like no one else, the one who stopped by her desk at the library nearly every day to harass her with some snarky comment that made her expression tighten with revenge. She’d even become one of my anchors.

Who the hell did Ohrley think he was horning in on one of my outside friends?

We shared all the others—reason number one why I was avoiding everyone right now.

Because I already knew they’d all side with him and jump on my case since I’d been the one to take off while he’d been willing to stay and talk shit out.

So why’d he have to go and claim Waverly too?

Asshole.

It was killing me that she wouldn’t tell me what kind of scrape he’d helped her with.

I mean, didn’t she realize I couldn’t handle unanswered questions?

They were like big red buttons that screamed Do Not Push .

Now I wanted to jam my finger down on the issue until I knew every single detail about it.

But she’d also been right.

Parker and I had been through the whole grieving process together.

I’d shared some of the darkest, most painful things about myself with him and the others.

And he’d done the same for us. It had bound us in a way I wasn’t even sure how to break.

Not that I wanted to. I knew I’d get over this and forgive him soon enough.

But shit, right now it was irritating as hell to be so… stuck to him.

Not in the mood for a dozen different lectures about how I needed to forgive him and move on, I drove to my grandparents on the Laterman’s side.

When I’d first moved into Archer House, I’d done my own laundry. But Gram had asked and asked and fucking asked about it until I eventually gave in, and now I took a load over to her house every Friday afternoon for her to wash.

That seemed to make her feel happy and useful, so it had become a routine for me to pick my cleaned and folded laundry back up on Sunday nights.

Then, because I didn’t want Nana on the Dugger side of the family to feel left out because she somehow always knew when I visited the other set of grandparents, I had to go over to the Dugger house directly afterward, where they’d feed me supper.

Hoping Gram had finished my laundry a day early, I pulled into the Latermans’ drive and whistled as I made my way to the front door. Without knocking, I headed inside, calling, “Hey, it’s me.” Tilting my head, I added, “Gram? Pop-Pop? You home?”

The front room was empty, which wasn’t surprising since neither Gram nor Pop-Pop had ever spent much time in here.

But there were a couple of large, old boxes piled on the floor in the middle of the room that drew my curiosity.

Slathered with about fifty years’ worth of tape, they were decorated in dozens of crossed-out Sharpie marker messages claiming their contents were either kitchen supplies, old books, or Christmas decorations.

I was closing in on them for a better look when Gram appeared in the doorway, wiping her hands on a dishtowel.

“Why, Keene,” she exclaimed, her face brightening when she saw me. “What’re you doing here? You’re a day early.”

“Hey, Gram.” I ducked my head and turned my cheek her way so she could kiss it per her usual.

“I was feeling bad because I had to leave so fast yesterday when I dropped off my clothes.” Oaklynn had given me and Younger strict instructions to set out games in the garage for the party before we were allowed to shower and wash up, so I’d barely dashed up the steps, thrust my laundry basket through the doorway, and then taken off again.

“Oh, you don’t have to worry about entertaining a silly old woman like me,” Gram announced, even as she blushed and smiled, then batted at my arm, grateful for my attention.

“What’re you talking about?” I countered in mock outrage and set both my hands on my heart. “Silly old women are my favorite people to entertain.”

She scoffed and rolled her eyes but kept smiling the whole time. “What am I ever gonna do with a devilish charmer like you?”

I knew she wasn’t looking for an answer, but I liked giving ’em anyway. Snagging her around the waist, I pulled her in for a big side hug and loudly kissed her temple, right through her stringy, straight gray hair. “Love me like I’m your favorite grandson, I reckon.”

“Well, I do that,” she agreed, nudging my ribs as I pulled away. “But only because you’re the only one I got.”

I laughed at her sassy comeback and finally motioned to the boxes. “What’s all this?”

Waving a dismissive hand, Gram rolled her eyes. “Oh, nothing. Just Christmas decorations that’re ready to go up into the attic. Donny said he’d get to them, but his knees have been acting up again, so?—”

“I can take them up,” I offered, already hefting all three boxes into my arms and propping them on one shoulder.

“Oh, honey. You don’t have to do that. Your grandfather will?—”

“I don’t mind,” I said and started into the hall so I could find the pull-down string that opened the trapdoor.

When I was a kid, I used to love going into the attic and snooping through all the old boxes.

Rifling through my mom’s stuff had been my favorite.

There was a homemade card she’d made in the third grade with macaroni pasted around the edges.

Inside she’d said something along the lines of not understanding why her teacher had forced her to glue food to paper to give to her mother as a present, but she was doing it anyway to get a good grade.

My mother had been so unusual.

I’d loved the shit out of her.

Below me, Gram was pressing both hands to her chest as she cooed, “Well, aren’t you just the sweetest? I don’t know what we’d do without our Keene.”

I didn’t answer, too busy grunting as the weight shifted on my shoulder, and I started to climb. But I made it up without a mishap and was setting the boxes down in a bare space where I knew the Christmas shit went.

On my way back to the ladder, I glanced toward my mom’s boxes and wondered not for the first time if I should tell Gram and Pop-Pop that their daughter’s ghost was haunting the university library.

The thing was, they’d already grieved that loss and said their goodbyes.

It just felt as if I’d be dragging them through that pain all over again if I told them she was still around.

Because I was going to figure out a way to help my mother move on.

No matter how much I didn’t want her to leave me again, I knew she had to.

Eventually. She wasn’t supposed to be stuck in our world with no physical body.

So I’d decided not to tell her parents about her to keep them from suffering the way I knew I would when she left again.

The only time I’d ever seen my grandfather cry was at her funeral.

Thinking about him, I asked, “Where is Pop-Pop, anyway?” as I climbed back down the ladder.

“Oh, he got called into the factory because the evening supervisor quit without any warning.”

“Again?” I sent her a dismayed glance as I refolded the ladder and pushed it back into the ceiling.

Gram rolled her eyes. “Oh, I know. Just four more years until retirement, though. We’ve been counting down the days.

” Thrusting my laundry basket at me that she must’ve fetched while I was in the attic, she added, “Here. You might as well take these with you now since I’m done.

It’ll save you from having to come back again tomorrow. ”

“What? You’re done already.” Shaking my head, I lifted the basket from her arms. “Gram, you’re seriously too good to me.”

“Well, someone should be,” she grumbled with a roll of her eyes. “That Cynthia certainly never cleaned the grass stains off the knees of your jeans right.”

I grinned, amused by how she and Nana were still feuding after all these years. “Nana tries her best, Gram.”