their jobs back,” Dad cuts in with a chuckle.
“You’re a good man, Papa Preston,” she tells him, getting up on her toes and kissing his cheek.
“Where’s Katie?” Lucy asks, coming up beside me like a tiny, stealth ninja.
I motion toward the playhouse. “Playing with Benny.”
“I should probably check on her. She’s going through a phase of licking every surface.” Lucy takes my hand and leads me down the steps. I take Mia’s, and she takes my dad’s. All four of us walk, like a Red Rover line, toward the playhouse.
When we near, Lucas puts a finger to his mouth, telling us to be quiet. And so we do. We creep to the opening and all look inside. Benny’s sitting on the floor with the book on his lap, his arm swung around Katie’s shoulders. She’s slowly nodding off against Benny’s side, as he tells her all about granite.
I turn to Lucy, questioning if she’s thinking what I’m thinking. “Lulee’s Library,” she whispers, holding her hands to her chest. “This is too much.” And then I look at my son, sitting in a playhouse in the yard where I spent so many days and nights creating memories with my family. My hope for his future is that he’ll get a chance to do the same. Right here. Where I got to live out adventures I’d discovered in between pages of numerous books. Where branches were used as swords and bedsheets as capes, and we’d come home when the sun set, cut up and bruised, and when our parents asked what the heck happened, my brothers and I wouldn’t have a clue, because we were too busy having fun. This place is my home. It’s where brotherhoods were formed, and bonds were created. Bonds so strong I thought no one could break them.
Mia could have.
But she didn’t.
Because she knew what this was to me.
This was love.
This was loyalty.
I choke back my fears—fears of concrete jungles and too many people and too many sounds, but then Benny looks up, his eyes holding mine, and all those fears disappear. “Hi, buddy,” I say over the knot in my throat.
Benny smiles. Then: “Hi, Daddy.”
Chapter Ninety-One
Mia
“You ready to go?” Leo asks, slipping his hands around my waist from behind. I’m standing in the backyard of the farmhouse, surrounded by so much beauty, it pains me to have to leave. Tammy had worked so hard on the memorial garden for Papa, and I’d never envisioned it to look like this when it was done. And I sure didn’t expect to have such a visceral response to it, either.
“It’s so…” I whisper, unable to hide my emotions. Not that I would have to.
“It’s everything he was.” He spins me to him but keeps his hold tight. Bright blue eyes level on mine. “He was a great man, Mia, and as cliché as it sounds, he’d be so damn proud of the woman you’ve become. The mother you are, without ever having a mother yourself.”
He’s wrong, though. I had Tammy. And in a few months, she’ll be my mother on paper. No step. Just mom.
“You’re going to miss your flight if we don’t leave soon.” He hesitates to add, “The traffic is horrible at this time.”
Missing my flight wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world, but he’s right. I take one more look around me, breathing in Papa’s presence, and then I let Leo lead me to the car, where Benny’s already strapped in the backseat. I force a smile as I get in. “Are you ready to go home?” I ask him.
Benny doesn’t respond, too busy rebooting.
“Here,” Leo says, handing me his phone. “You choose the music.”
I go through his playlists as he begins the drive to Charlotte, where Dad and Tammy will be meeting us at the airport. I select one titled Mia, my lips ticking and my eyes closing when “Brown Eyed Girl” by Van Morrison plays through the speakers.
“When do you think you guys can come back? Or I can go up there,” Leo says, and I look over at his profile—the boy, now a man, I’ve been in love with for ten years. He’s changed so much, and yet, he’s still the same boy who held my hand as I cried. Who sat with me, a hundred and thirty feet in the air, and shined a flashlight on curse words I didn’t want to see. Who hummed to music that he’d never heard of, but listened to because he knew it was sentimental