It was a chilly dark morning. As Annie waited on Lena’s doorstep, she balled her fingers inside the sleeves of her thin sweatshirt.
Maybe Lena hadn’t heard the knock? Annie shook out her hands and pressed the doorbell. Its ring echoed through the house.
She peeked into the dark front window. Lena was probably sleeping in. Or out running an errand.
There was probably an excellent reason why she hadn’t returned any of Annie’s texts from earlier this morning, but Annie sensed it was a reaction to seeing those photos of Bryce Neary last night. When she’d turned around, Lena’s eyes had been cold and hard, her mouth had been a straight line.
Annie had never seen Lena look so—
Mean. Lena had looked mean.
After the kids and Mike had gone to sleep, Annie had tiptoed to the den and lifted the photo from the wall. She’d sat with it on the couch, remembered the last time she’d seen Bryce alive, on the night of the Meekers’ last party.
She’d been a few feet away from where she was now, on the other side of Lena’s house, when she’d felt a hand on her shoulder, and then a rise of hope.
Please be happy, she thought. Please, please, please.
When Annie turned around, she looked straight into Bryce’s green eyes. His summer cut made him look a bit like a shorn lamb, innocent and exposed.
Years before, Mike had tried to persuade Annie to position the photo less prominently, but she refused. It was the only way she could think to express how much Bryce Neary mattered. And how sorry she was.
On Lena’s steps, Annie was subsumed by a wave of despondency so strong that she could hardly breathe for the thick of it, washed up her nose and down her throat.
It would pass.
And then—who knew when—it would return. No matter how hard you fought for one, there was no such thing as a completely fresh start. Even without the photo of them together, Annie would carry Bryce with her forever.
With trembling hands, Annie grasped in her bag for a pen, scribbled a note on the outside of the envelope, tucked it under the cake carrier’s handle, and hurried back to her car.