Come to Me Softly (Closer to You #2)(68)
Author: A.L. Jackson

Picking up the picture, Karen caressed her thumb over the black wooden frame that housed the image, like she could somehow touch that day. “This right here?” she said, tapping it. “This was Aly telling your mom you were her very best friend and she wasn’t leaving your side.”

That rock of unspent emotion at the base of my throat throbbed.

Fuck.

I tried to maintain my cool, doing my all not to lose my shit. But damn it all, Karen Moore just had that way about her. Like she was a direct portal to the past, kicking up stones with every step she took. Stones that were better left unturned.

Still, my heart fluttered, because Aly beamed across at me before she looked up at her mom, like the memory had just sailed into her consciousness. “I forgot about that . . . I was digging through old pictures at the house a few weeks ago and found it.” Aly glanced at me, love pouring free. “I knew I wanted it on display . . . now I know why.”

My chest tightened.

She’d brought home a picture of my family, too. She seemed almost sad when I came in and found her in her little room, sitting on the floor. She was floating in a sea of photos, lost in all the memories spread out around her. She’d looked over at me as if she was in some kind of pain. Softly, she beckoned me to her side, where she had so many moments of our past set out on display.

In her hand she held a picture of my family. It was from when I was little and could barely remember my baby sister, who my mom had propped up against her chest.

But my eye had been drawn to the middle of the floor, where Aly had laid out a picture of my mom. She was by herself, just f**king smiling at the camera with all that light that had surrounded her.

“I think we should pick one of these to put up on the mantel,” Aly had whispered, carefully, quietly. And God, I’d wanted to be pissed off at her, lash out at her for even suggesting something so obscene. Putting my family up there like I felt pride when what I’d done to it was my greatest disgrace.

As if I had the right.

It’d taken everything I had not to mangle them up in my hands, to destroy them like I’d destroyed everything else. Instead I’d looked at Aly, choked over my demand. “Don’t . . . I don’t ever want to see those again.”

I knew she’d tucked them away somewhere in her studio, within the drawings bred in her mind and born of her hand, somewhere in the places where she kept my mother’s face on the pages of her sketch pads.

Nostalgia billowed through Karen, her movements saturated with it as she carefully set the picture back on the mantel. Then she turned to the fireplace and ran her fingers along the ornate carvings. “And this . . . this is unbelievable,” she murmured in distinct awe.

Pride made another rush on me, boosting me to a level where I didn’t belong.

My head spun.

Shit.

It was like I was being forced up the shore on a swelling wave. At the same time I was all twisted up in the undertow, losing footing, losing ground. Once again, it was Karen Moore yanking me from one extreme to the other.

But this . . . this was what I was most proud of, what I’d poured myself into. Working on it, my hands had twitched while my imagination soared. I’d been compelled. That was the only way to describe it. The design for the fireplace had spiraled through my brain, urging my fingers to create. I saw it so clearly the first time I walked through the door of this house.

Even before I brought Aly here.

The idea of rebuilding this house had just come to me the first time I walked through it, like all the pieces had stacked together and become clear. But at the center of it was the fireplace. How this single structure would become something unique to mute out all the bland, how the rest of the layout of the house would flow from it, each room distinct on its own, but still tied to the creation Karen was currently tracing with her fingers.

I’d finished it only two days ago. After dinner, Aly’d been all too excited to build our first fire in it, to show it off. Immediately everyone had been drawn into this room, settling right into its comfort.

Karen’s fingertips gently caressed the lines, curling through the vines and up to the petals that stretched out, twisted, and twined as they merged into the gnarled bouquet that stretched across the top.

“Just incredible,” she whispered, her touch fluttering over the intricate designs as if they told a story. She looked across at me, sincerely, but with something so powerful it cut me to core.

A tremor of unease shook me. Because I realized she was having some kind of secret conversation with me, as if she thought I should know something I didn’t. Suddenly I felt like I was struggling to catch on, to catch up, when I was pretty damned sure the smart thing to do would be to step away.

“You know I have it?” she asked.

A frown formed, set deep between my eyes. Misunderstanding I shook my head. “I’m sorry?” I asked, wishing I hadn’t, because something sick plummeted into my stomach, the hint of a heavy memory that had disappeared a long time ago into the darkest corner of my consciousness sinking like a stone.

Karen Moore wrung her hands, tilting her head, searching. “Before your father moved away . . . he . . . he brought me a bunch of her stuff . . . he said he couldn’t handle taking it with him but he couldn’t stand the thought of someone having it who didn’t know her.”

Cold crawled under the surface of my skin. Freezing me from the inside out. Stop got stuck on my swollen tongue, because that’s all I wanted her to do. I just wanted her to stop.

I could sense the concern rise up in Aly. Palpable. Like it was pushing out from her and reaching for me.

Like she was desperate to shoulder some of my burden.

And God, I hated being this way. Karen couldn’t even mention my father without me losing my shit. But goddamn it, didn’t she understand? Didn’t she know that dredging up old shit was just asking for trouble, bringing stuff out into the light when it was meant for the dark?

Didn’t she understand what I’d done?

Karen just pressed on. “The jewelry box,” she clarified.

Every muscle in my body seized. Because that hint of fear that had plummeted in my gut manifested into something whole.

Nausea rolled through me.

Lines etched into her forehead, and her head jerked for the shortest second toward the fireplace. “It is the same, isn’t it?” Her words came with caution, with a quiet love for her friend, all of it tempered with compassion.

Still, they stole every f**king last drop of air from the room.