Ivy pulled her dry lips inside her mouth, swiped at the crusty spot on her cheek, and then shoved her hands into the pockets of her baggy sweatpants. “No, it’s all good. I stayed up late and accidentally dozed off.”
Laughter sparked in his eyes. “You’re cute in the morning.” The lines around his eyes deepened.
“Oh, hush.” She nodded to the cups in his hands. “Please say one of those is for me. There’s no coffee in this house.”
He extended one cup to her. “One cream, two sugars. Just the way you like it.”
Ivy held the steaming cup under her nose and inhaled the comforting scent of fresh-brewed goodness. “You’re the best friend a girl could ask for.”
Reese stepped inside, studying the white linoleum on the entryway floor as he ran his thumb over the smooth, close-trimmed edges of his fingernails. When he glanced up, something lived in his expression that connected with an ache in her own heart. He looked to the living room window where morning light streamed in. “I try to be. When you let me.” His words were muttered under his breath.
Ivy winced. “Well, we’d better get going. Today we’re delivering the porcelain Victorian ladies to Mrs. Thatcher. She was a volunteer in the hospital nursery for as long as I can remember. She would know something about a motherless child showing up.” Without waiting for his reply, she headed for her room to get ready.
No matter how much he wanted to know why their relationship had changed—why she changed—she wasn’t ready to hash out what had happened with Seth. With her job. Not then. Maybe not ever.
At noon, Ivy headed to Grandma’s front porch with cups of sweet tea while Reese brought a bag of chicken fingers and french fries back from Carla’s. They settled on the porch swing for a makeshift picnic lunch.
Ivy jumped up from her seat. “I just remembered.” She went inside and returned with an unopened jar of caramel sauce she had spied in the near-empty pantry last night. She couldn’t help but wonder if Grandma had left it just for her.
Reese wrinkled his nose. “Disgusting. I can’t believe you still do that.”
Ivy stuck out her tongue, then dunked the fry in caramel and ate it with flourish. “After two hours of chitchatting with Mrs. Thatcher and four other people on Grandma’s list, I learned a big fat nothing.”
“I thought it was pretty enlightening myself.”
Ivy sighed. “It was sweet hearing Mrs. Thatcher talk about how my parents changed when I became a part of their life. How did she say it? That there was a new “aliveness” about them when they brought me home.” She shrugged and dunked another fry. “Just sweet stories I already know. But I still don’t know who took that journal and why.”
“I think you’re looking so hard that you’re missing something right in front of you.”
She jerked her head in his direction. “Do you know something you’re not telling me?”
He picked at the breading on his chicken strip. “I don’t know anything about your birth family. But what if this whole thing is really about finding your missing pieces?” He tapped his chest.
“Maybe I’ll never really know who I am until I know where I came from. Who my birth parents are. What happened. Where they are now. I’ve tried my whole life to get away from that and I always circle back here in the end.”
Reese stared out toward Grandma’s old shed. “I know it must be hard expecting that journal to be there, and having the truth jerked away. But it’s my deepest hope that my genes have absolutely no bearing on the man I become. It’s the hope I hang my future on.”
Ivy hadn’t intended to poke his wounds. She still remembered that day in third grade when an older boy called Reese trailer trash and asked if all his brothers and sisters went by numbers instead of names since there were so many of them.
Reese had blackened the kid’s eye, but after that day Ivy noticed a change in Reese. An increased drive to build a reputation he could be proud of. A reputation built on hard work, self-control, and dedication—a far cry from his father who gambled away his paychecks and had been in the middle of more than a few bar fights.
Reese dropped his Styrofoam container into the paper sack and brushed the crumbs from his hands as he stood. “I have an appointment with a new client I can’t miss. Will you be okay to work on this on your own for a few hours?”
She smiled. “Of course. Is business going well? Mom said you decided to go out on your own, a remodeling venture?”
“It’s definitely a learning experience. When I come back this afternoon, I’ll bring stuff to cook if that works for you.”
She nodded. “I think Uncle Vee is coming too.”
After his truck disappeared down the drive, Ivy headed to the garage for her next task. She opened the side door. Light streamed in. There was a scrabble of movement. Ivy stifled a shriek as an animal with light-colored fur darted through a hole in the back of the garage.
She exited the building. A white dog ran for the woods, tail tucked between its legs. In the back of the garage she discovered a hole in the corner where a bit of the wood siding had broken away near the ground. Beside it was a little circle where autumn leaves and grass clippings that had blown in had become matted down. Poor thing. This was no place to make a home.
She’d bring it some dog food after her errands—let it know she was a friend.
Ivy continued exploring and found the plastic totes she had been searching for beside the dilapidated Oldsmobile. One by one, she dragged them into the sunlight.
Ivy whipped a hand towel from her back pocket and brushed off the fine layer of dust.
She pried the lid from the first bin and sorted through wall hangings that came straight from the 1950s—a picture of ladies sitting under giant hair dryers, vintage signs advertising perm creams and shampoos, a giant pair of scissors meant to hang on the wall.
Ivy rocked back on her heels and swiped at the sweat beads on her nose. Babette at the salon would adore the relics.
She peeled off the lid to the second box and stared at twenty different reflections of herself. A box of hand mirrors. Each ornate wood-framed mirror was different and painted with bright colors.
Ivy searched her reflection, touching her cheekbone. The mark Seth left had faded but the internal scar remained. Ivy trapped her lips between her teeth and grabbed the lid to cover the box, but a white 4x6 rectangle caught her attention. In Grandma’s script were the words, Ivy’s Family.
Her thoughts scurried as she unearthed it. A picture of her birth parents? Her birth mother?
Ivy pulled it free and flipped it over.
It was one of her favorite pictures but nothing extraordinary. In it, Ivy was about five, wearing a pink frilly dress, surrounded by her favorite people in the world. Mom, Dad, Grandma, and Uncle Vee. The five of them couldn’t have looked happier. Ivy walked to the porch and tucked the photograph into her purse.
Then she lugged the bins to the back seat of her sedan.
She rolled her windows down on the way to the salon. The sticky breeze provided far more efficient cooling than her car’s defunct air-conditioning. Her long brown strands were sucked out the window and whipped on the wind.
After a year of agonizing over her appearance, she’d ignored mirrors since leaving Seth. She’d wasted too much time trying to look the part of Seth’s fiancée. All for a man who refused to be pleased.