She then folded the bag and shook it up, coating every single french fry with as much salt as possible, rolled the top of the bag down, and set it between them. She glanced up and realized she was smiling. He quickly looked away.
She turned toward the fridge for the ketchup and swallowed the pesky sadness that had crept in uninvited.
It’s not like old times, she reminded herself. No matter how familiar parts of this ritual were.
She sat across from him and unwrapped her burger, inhaling the greasy goodness and trying not to calculate how much extra time she’d have to work out tomorrow in order to account for all these calories.
She took a bite. The calories were worth it.
They ate in silence for several seconds, and then finally Louisa couldn’t take it anymore. “It’s probably weird being back here, huh?”
Not what she’d intended to say, but at least it filled the space.
He swallowed the food in his mouth and reached into the bag, pulled out a wad of fries, and shrugged.
“You’re eating all the fries,” she said.
“Better step up your game then.”
Her eyes locked on to his, and for a fleeting moment they were friends again.
“Probably weird living in my old house,” he countered.
Her turn to take a handful of fries. She shrugged.
So far this conversation was the equivalent of driving around a cul-de-sac.
“I always liked this house,” she said.
He took a swig from the bottle of water she’d set out before he arrived but said nothing.
“It had started to fall apart a little,” she said. “I guess it was important to me to fix it.”
“Why?” He’d stopped chewing. What had she done to earn his full attention? She wanted to know so she didn’t do it again.
Should she tell him the truth? That she’d made such a mess of things that she felt like she owed it to his family somehow to protect the space that had been theirs? That she’d spent the majority of her life trying to make up for foolish mistakes that felt so petty and ridiculous now but that had such a harmful effect on so many people?
“Are we going to talk about this every time we see each other?” she asked instead.
He didn’t answer.
“I liked the house,” she said. “I wanted to keep it from becoming an eyesore. That’s all.”
“That’s all?”
She paused. “There was a lot of happiness here once. Maybe I was trying to hold on to a sliver of that too.”
“Did you?”
“Sure,” she lied. “Nothing but happy times since I moved in.”
He popped the last bite of his burger into his mouth and rolled the paper into a tight ball. “Should we get started?”
She glanced down at her half-eaten burger and set it aside. “Uh, sure.”
He pulled the box onto the table in front of him and ripped the tape off as if it were a package he’d ordered from Amazon.
But as soon as he took the lid off, she could tell by the look on his face that he hadn’t expected the sucker punch of emotion that washed over him. She hadn’t expected it either, but her eyes had filled with tears.
He glanced up at her and put the lid back on the box. “I just remembered I’ve got to get down to the station and check on some stuff for Duncan.”
She frowned. “Cody.”
He stood, picked up the box, and walked toward the front door. She followed him but said nothing, aware that this was a battle he would have to fight on his own. And fearing with almost 100 percent certainty her presence only made things worse.
As much as she wanted a chance to make things right, the best thing she could give Cody right now was space. Because what he needed was very different from what she wanted.
Knowing that almost broke her heart.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
THIS WAS A BAD IDEA.
Cody stormed out of Louisa’s house, which still felt a lot like his house, and drove the Jeep back to his place, trying not to think about the box on his front seat.
They’d left Nantucket in a rush after his father died, but once they got home, they had to leave that house behind too. There was no money.
Cody could still remember hearing his mom on the phone with someone he could only assume was a money guy.
“There’s nothing left?” she’d asked, a waver in her voice. “But where did it all go? Daniel was a fanatic about saving.”
Cody found out later that while his father was a financial genius, in the weeks leading up to his death, he’d withdrawn large sums of cash, leaving their personal accounts drained. He had no life insurance policy—an oversight to be sure.
Where had their nest egg gone? How could his father have been so stupid as to drain everything? And worse, where did that money go? Sure, he had investments—some they couldn’t take out right away, some that would sustain them for a time—but their lifestyle had to change. Their security was gone.
The questions were too big, too heavy, and he wasn’t sure he wanted to know the answers. Besides, the seething cocktail of his mother’s anger and grief was enough to keep him from digging around. He decided that his dad must have had a plan for it. His father always had a plan.
Right?
It didn’t matter. At least that was what he told himself. Wherever it was, his dad’s nest egg was gone. None of it was left for Cody, Marley, or their mom. The pain of that sliced through their family like a newly sharpened knife through a ripe cantaloupe.
His father’s death turned his mother into a different person. She went from joyful and engaged to nearly catatonic, and the only thing Cody wanted to do was take her pain away.
When it came time to pack up the house, she haphazardly filled boxes, and Cody and Marley went behind her to try to make sense of the disorganized mess. Their last night in the house, Cody realized his father’s office door was still closed, and as far as he knew, nobody had packed anything from inside.
He pushed open the door and inhaled—the scent of his dad’s aftershave still lingered in the air. Nagging guilt nearly overtook him. How was it possible that his dad was really gone? Weren’t fathers invincible? Cody had always thought so.
The room was tragically frozen in time, photos on the wall, books filling the shelves. His father was a voracious reader, and as Cody ran a hand over his collection of crime novels and history books, he tried to take a mental snapshot so he’d never forget this room.
“What are you doing in here?”
He spun around and found a haggard, tired version of his mother standing in the doorway.
“We should pack up Dad’s office.”
“No,” she said. “Everything stays here.”
Cody didn’t understand. His father’s office was full of things they would want. Memories, sure, but paperwork, too. What if there was something important they needed down the road?
“Let me handle it, Mom,” Cody said. He refrained from adding, You’re not thinking clearly.
“What could we possibly need? Everything is gone.” She moved away from the door and motioned for him to pass through, which he did, grudgingly. “Don’t go in there again.”
But he did go in. That night, when his mother was in a prescription pill–induced slumber, he went in and packed everything he could into a box that would pass for one of his own. He didn’t look through the contents of the desk; he just silently moved them from the drawer to the box, put the lid on it, taped it up, and wrote his name on the side.