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I gave a half-hearted shrug. “I was never allowed to play with it. I only saw inside it a few times when she was putting something away.”
I had to tell myself that he’d had a different relationship with her. It didn’t matter that she’d shown him the box.
Owen finally looked over at me, confusion showing on his normally blank face. “Guess she just got tired of finding me digging through it all the time,” he admitted. “Third or fourth time, she just showed me then told me not to go through it alone.”
“I listened the first time.” It was a pathetic response and sounded whiny to me, but I couldn’t stop the words before they’d popped out. “I always listened the first time.” That was what they’d wanted, wasn’t it?
I wasn’t so sure anymore. I’d gotten sent to my room the first and only time I’d tried to look in the box. I remembered getting told later that it was wrong to touch things that didn’t belong to me. I’d wanted to make them happy, so I’d left the box alone.
“You were probably the only reason they didn’t die of a heart attack instead.” His dark humor made my stomach tighten up, and I shook my head. He just grinned and ignored me. “Mom said I gave her enough gray hair that she had to start dyeing it early. She never had to fuss at you. I’m sure she appreciated that.”
It felt like he was stretching to find something nice to say, but at least he was trying. “Probably. Thanks.” I looked into the box. “What did she keep in here besides the pictures?”
Owen started with the linens on one side, delicate lace that looked as though it had been hand-sewn too long ago to remember. There were other pieces of cloth, monogrammed and carefully preserved. He pulled out a small box, tapping it, though he didn’t open it. “Jewelry,” he explained.
He flipped open one of the neatly stacked folders on the other side, scanning its contents before moving to the next.
“Birth certificates, marriage certificate, things like that,” Owen murmured, but his brow furrowed in concentration.
It was like he was expecting something else to be there, and he was surprised that it wasn’t. He glanced at me as he pulled out another box.
“She never let me look in this one,” he remarked. “Just said that it was hers, thank you very much, and she was allowed to have secrets.” A small, lopsided grin briefly crossed his lips, and my heart skipped a beat at the sight of it. “You wanna?”
It felt like she was looking over my shoulder and I fought the urge to turn around and apologize. “Are you sure?”
He gave me an are-you-kidding look and nodded.
Maybe it was because I’d finally gotten permission from someone to open the box, but it was easier as I reached for it. My fingers brushed against Owen’s, and I fought not to respond. I could feel his fingers against my lips, and I just wanted to close my eyes and savor the memory.
All I could do was pray he didn’t see my reaction to his touch as I set the box on the floor in front of me. Lifting off the lid of the small box, we both held our breaths as we looked inside for the first time.
“Blankets?”
“Baby teeth?” Owen barked out over me.
I looked up, questioningly. “This was the important box she said you couldn't touch?”
He started to laugh. “Her most prized possessions were your old baby teeth and our old baby blankets.” He reached in and picked up the little plastic container labeled simply with my name.
“Why did she save my baby teeth? Gross.”
“Women are weird, and moms are even worse. Who knows. You were the first, and she was probably trying to save every memory or something. See,” He pointed to the stacks of papers at the bottom of the chest. “That has to be every art project from when we were kids.”
Part of me expected to just see Owen’s, but even just giving them a quick glance, I saw an art project we did one year for Christmas and a Mother’s Day card that I thought had gotten thrown away years ago. She’d never kept pictures on the fridge or set out the things I’d made for her, but it looked like she’d still cherished them, just in her own way.
Owen’s voice broke through my mental wandering. “You want to look through this stuff some more or look at it another time?”
He had a look on his face that was serious and… something else that I couldn’t define. I knew he’d be okay with whatever I’d said. Having that kind of confidence in his reactions was so new it tightened something inside my chest.
“Let’s put it away for now.” I gave him a questioning look. “But you’ll go through it with me later?”
“Sure.” His hand came up and brushed my hair back. “We’ll do it together.”
Chapter 6 Owen
The third time someone had made a complaint like, “There’s cheese on my cheeseburger. I didn’t want cheese,” I knew it was going to be one of those nights. Every night has its unique flavor of customer, for better or worse, but that shift had seemed to be particularly special.
By the time we’d closed the doors and gotten the place cleaned up — and thank you, parents of the table by the window, for letting your kids do a finger painting in ketchup on the table. The mustard and mayonnaise touches really were special. They’re going to be brilliant artists one day.
