Total pages in book: 99
Estimated words: 93002 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 465(@200wpm)___ 372(@250wpm)___ 310(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 93002 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 465(@200wpm)___ 372(@250wpm)___ 310(@300wpm)
“Maybe.” I opened the side door of the garage. The space had been split in two. One half was Jerry’s studio, the walls there lined with shelves holding everything from glazes to projects in various stages of finishing. A pegboard on the wall held all sorts of tools, and the potter’s wheel sat in the middle of the room, covered by a sheet. The other half of the garage was taken up by more shelves stacked with boxes and plastic storage bins.
“I haven’t been in here in ages,” I said, trying to remember the last time I’d come in the garage. It had been years, and everything had been rearranged since.
Sterling pulled out her phone and started texting. “I’m asking Emmett if there’s any chance of getting something to back up his suspicions. Maybe something solid enough that your mom will believe it.” Sterling hit send on her text and then looked up at me. “She’s afraid to hope. She’s been so angry at him for leaving her. The idea that he was taken, that’s a whole new hurt, you know.”
I did, considering I was grappling with it myself. To me, the idea that he hadn’t left me willingly made all the difference. But maybe not so for my mother. Or maybe, as Sterling said, it was just that simple—the hope that she’d been wrong all this time was too much. And maybe forgiving my father would be a whole new kind of pain, a new kind of grief. There’d been enough of both in my mother’s life.
Sterling’s phone beeped. “Emmett says he’s working on it.” She looked up to see me standing in front of a shelf, reading the labels on the bins.
“She must have reorganized all of this stuff at some point,” I said. “These bins don’t date from our move from Georgia to Oregon, but they’re not new either.”
I lifted one that said Forrest Toys and pulled it off the shelf, setting it on the floor. Sterling pulled over an empty bucket, turned it upside down, and sat on it.
“Let’s see what’s in here,” she said.
I pulled off the lid to find stacks of board games, an ancient pack of Uno, and a tin covered with faded pictures of dominoes. I opened it to find it filled with stone arrowheads and shark’s teeth.
“This is all my stuff,” I said, brushing a finger over the sharp edge of a tooth.
“I don’t understand,” Sterling said, rummaging through the bin. “These are your things from when you lived in Georgia?” I nodded. “Why didn’t your mom unpack it and put it in your room here?”
I wasn’t sure I knew. Thinking back, I said, “When we came out here, we lived with my grandparents. My mom was…” I shook my head slowly at the memory. “She wasn’t in great shape those first couple years after my dad died. We lived with Pop-Pop and Grandma. They didn’t have a lot of room. My mom and I shared a bedroom for a while.” I trailed off, remembering hearing her cry herself to sleep.
So many nights, I’d joined her, silently weeping in my own bed. As much as I’d loved my grandparents and my mom, I’d hated everything about being in Oregon. I’d hated leaving home, hated being without my father, hated losing my friends and going to a new school. Everything had been in pieces.
I drew in a slow breath and let it out. “Pop-Pop ended up building onto their house, and I got my own room. We were going to move out, but then Grandma got sick, and we stayed. I guess we just never unpacked a lot of this stuff.”
I dug through the bin, lifting out old, thin cardboard boxes of puzzles, looking for that copy of Treasure Island from my father’s code. Instead, I found a layer of stuffed animals. I reached in and pulled one out, finding an owl with amber plastic eyes, bushy eyebrows, and pointed ears.
“My father bought me this,” I said, my words rough, my throat tight.
Wet heat prickled in the backs of my eyes, and I blinked, feeling Sterling’s hand land on my shoulder.
“He—” I opened my mouth to tell her my father had won me this at a town fair. The owl had reminded me of the one on a poster at the library that I loved when I was a kid. I’d seen it at the fair and wanted it, and my father had paid over and over for handfuls of darts until he’d popped enough balloons to get it for me.
I wanted to tell her, but my voice strangled in my throat. That wet heat gathered in my eyes rolled down my cheeks. My shoulders hitched as I tried to breathe.
Sterling’s arm slid around me, her cheek against my shoulder. “I’m so sorry, Forrest,” she said. And I felt the heat of her own tears leaking through my shirt.