A Kaleidoscope of Butterflies - Christina Lee Page 0,25

when he’d found his brother asleep on the bare mattress, the sheets long boxed up along with their parents’ clothes.

“Mom and Dad would want this,” Audrey said in a confident tone from the bedroom door. She might’ve been young, but she kept him grounded in ways she didn’t even realize.

He blinked away the sting of tears, which seemed to appear quite suddenly nowadays. In this instance, he wasn’t really sure why. Maybe because moving on was painful, and he never really stopped grieving; it came in waves, pulling him under at a moment’s notice.

“Yeah,” he replied. “They loved Rhys.”

“And they’d want someone to use this space.”

He nodded. “Well, now someone will.”

Rhys’s presence would be like a breath of fresh air. And even though it was agonizing to move forward, maybe ignoring their room for so long only prolonged his suffering.

This would be good. And necessary. He made the motion to shut the door as he followed Audrey toward the hallway, then stopped himself. Audrey smiled sadly.

“What do you want for dinner?” Emerson asked around a thick throat as they joined Sam in the kitchen.

“Grilled cheese?” Audrey asked.

“With tomato soup?” Sam added.

Emerson grinned. “Sounds perfect.” It was their mom’s favorite, and now it seemed apropos.

They ate dinner as they caught up, and discussed Rhys joining them in another day.

It was going to be hard for Emerson not to reach out and touch him in a more meaningful way. But he’d had to live with plenty of painful things in his life, so he’d just file this one away to that dark corner of his heart.

7

Rhys

As soon as his mother helped him through the front door of his house, Rhys breathed a sigh of relief. It was something familiar after days of feeling like his body was not his own. He was suddenly glad about his decision to stay put in his childhood home after his mother moved to Florida, not only because it provided a place for his mom to visit when she was in town, but because in this precarious instance it grounded him.

He’d been woozy a lot of last week, in part because of the pain meds, which he’d be glad not to have to rely on in due time. But the other reason was that his memory was pretty fucking fuzzy. There were chunks of time missing, which could apparently happen with a traumatic injury, and as a result, everything felt off-kilter. Add in everyone treating him with kid gloves, and he was going to scream.

He hung on to his mom’s shoulder to carefully remove his shoes, lest he topple over. In short, he basically felt like someone had beaten the living shit out of him.

When he glanced around the house, everything looked the same, if a bit too neat, which meant his mom had tidied up. His dining table had piles of mail, his kitchen island a new bowl of fruit, and he would bet his mom had done his laundry as well.

He did a double take when his gaze landed on his living-room furniture. Wait a minute…

“Did I get a new couch?” he asked with a frown as he stared at the tan sectional. He remembered his online search for it last year, but his mom couldn’t have known which one he’d hoped to purchase to replace her plaid-patterned one with the frayed cushions from his childhood. So it must’ve been his doing. Another thing he couldn’t remember. Fucking hell.

His mom looked at him with those sad eyes she’d been using when she didn’t think he was paying attention. “Yes, honey. You got it on sale after the holidays. You really love it.”

He hobbled over to the piece of furniture that seemed slightly too large for the small space, with his mom following close behind in case he fell on his ass—which was entirely possible, unfortunately—and ran his hand along the arm of the couch.

“It’s nice,” he commented, as if it didn’t belong to him. It certainly didn’t feel like it did. But the afghan his mom had knitted when he was a baby hung on the back of the couch like it had on the older version. It offered a connection he needed right then.

“Let’s get you comfortable,” she suggested, reaching for his elbow.

“Okay.” He hated to rely on anybody but needed to swallow his pride on this occasion. She bolstered his shoulder, helping to ease him down. Rhys gritted his teeth as pain lanced through his side like it always did now when he