could start digging the foundation of the hotel the second the land thawed.
He was here now. He might as well clear it out today.
He studied the room. When they were young, Gabe had tried to celebrate every little thing, every pennant or badge any of them had won. Had tried to cheer his younger brothers up.
Once Nick had grown up enough to attend school, though, he’d come to understand that the town hadn’t adored him as his mother had. At home, he’d been special. Outside of this house? He’d been just another ordinary kid and that had been the cruelest trick life had played on him.
“Wow,” Emily breathed. “You used to play basketball? Look at all of your trophies.”
She stood in front of a wall of photos beside his bed. “Look at you and your brothers. You were about my age now. Wow. Surreal.”
Farther along was the room Gabe had shared with Tyler. When they were kids, there’d been bunk beds. When Nick had returned for Mom’s funeral, a double bed had already replaced those boyish ones.
“So whose bedroom was this? Gabe’s or Tyler’s?”
“Both.”
Emily wrinkled her nose. “Really? Your bedroom was bigger even though there was only one of you?”
He’d never noticed. It had honest to God never registered that Gabe and Tyler had had less than he’d had.
Looking at their small bedroom now, Nick wondered why Mom had worked things out so unfairly.
Emily wandered to the back of the house.
“That was my mother’s bedroom. Apparently,” he said, “Gabe turned it into an office after she died.”
“Can we visit her grave while we’re here?”
God, that would be hard. “Yes.”
“Can we go through the stuff in your room?”
He nodded.
Gabe had left flattened boxes and packing supplies in the small storage room at the back that used to hold emergency supplies for when they had blackouts. With Colorado’s winter storms, they’d been regular. Nick dragged a couple of boxes back to his room.
“Dad, look!” From the windowsill, Emily picked up a tiny figurine of a woman wearing a long dress and with a lamb crooked in one arm. “It’s so pretty. Is it really old?”
“Yes. It used to be my mom’s, her favorite thing in the whole world.” He took it from her. His sinuses ached again. Gabe must have left it in here for him. Okay, so maybe his brother wasn’t a complete prick.
Nick handed it back to Emily. God, he missed his mother.
“Here,” he said. “Keep it.”
“Really, Dad? Thanks.” She handled it reverently. “Look! A photo album.”
Photos. He hadn’t expected Gabe to leave him any.
“Oooh, let’s look at them.” Emily grabbed an album and threw herself onto the bed, where light shining through the window formed a halo around her. She could have been a young version of his mother sitting darning the endless reams of socks he and his brothers put holes in.
Where they had inherited their dad’s chocolate eyes and nearly black hair, Emily had inherited Mom’s mahogany hair and those blue eyes with the striking hazel ring.
But Mom’s prettiness had been beaten out of her by two jobs and her grief after Dad died, which she tried to muffle late at night so her boys wouldn’t hear her. But they did.
We did.
It had driven Gabe, the oldest, to take care of her and his younger brothers.
It had driven Tyler into law enforcement, to protect any scrap that was good about this life.
It had driven Nick to run and not come back.
But none of that had touched Emily, and he didn’t want it to now.
“Was this Grandpa?” She held a photograph of his father standing in brilliant sunlight on top of Mount Everest with a grin on his face. No wonder he’d been happy. The ascent had been a success, an incredible accomplishment.
The descent, however, had killed him.
He merely nodded, unable to speak. He’d been only five when Dad died, but so much tension had swirled through the house after his death, along with the grief. It had sent his mother into a tailspin that had taken her months to pull out of, but she had—eventually—and then she’d come to him.
“You’re my last baby, my special baby.”
“I’m not a baby,” he’d protested, but he’d liked how tightly she’d held him.
“No, you’re not. You’re my little man.” She’d kissed his head and whispered, “I love you,” and he’d never felt more secure.
No one had spoken about the tension. There were things Nick was sure he didn’t know, those things that scared him, unaccountably, and he wasn’t sure he ever