All of it held significance, but the truth was that he’d taken most of the important things when he’d bought his condo in the heart of the city. Nathaniel King could be a bastard and a half, and it would have been in character for him to purge Beckett’s room of any hint of his dead wife the same way he’d purged the rest of the house.
He walked to the corkboard and took down the two pictures of his mother he’d left behind. The rest were of friends from high school who he’d barely talked to after graduation, let alone now. They were good memories, but ultimately forgettable.
“Is that your mother?”
He tensed against the urge to shove the photos in his pocket to shield them from Samara. But it wasn’t like Beckett’s mother was a big secret. She was ancient history, at least according to his father. She’d never felt like ancient history to Beckett, though. Everywhere he looked in Thistledown Villa he saw evidence of her despite his old man’s best efforts. Nathaniel King could take down her pictures, dig up the flowers she’d planted in front of the house, and even go so far as to change the curtains she’d chosen for the whole house, but he couldn’t erase the memories Beckett had with her. No matter how hard he’d tried.
“Yeah. She died when I was nine.” The woman in the picture held a baby in a blue blanket—Beckett—and smiled broadly at the camera. Her blond hair looked like it’d been tossed in the wind, and the fields of Thistledown Villa peeked out of the background. They’d played in those fields for days on end during the summers, picking wildflowers while she wove stories about the magical creatures that made their home there. Fantastical adventures his father had always been too busy to come along on.
“She looks happy.” There was a strange hushed tone to Samara’s words.
“She was.” He slid the photo into his pocket. “They both were.” Maybe things would have been different if Nathaniel wasn’t so damn determined to smite out every piece of her. It might have been grief pushing him to destroy his own memories with his late wife, but it had only ever seemed a betrayal to Beckett. She was barely gone a week before the purge started. He still vividly remembered walking into the kitchen and finding Nathaniel ripping the photos from the fridge and tossing them into the trash. Even now, twenty-five years later, anger flushed hot and painful in his chest. “My father would have been a different person if she’d lived.”
“Maybe.” Samara shrugged, her expression guarded. “Or maybe she would have lived long enough for it all to fall apart.”
Old wound.
Like recognized like, and they stood in perfect understanding for the space of a heartbeat. Beckett broke the moment, turning away to the desk taking up the corner nearest the window. He found the key taped to the underside of it and unlocked the bottom drawer. The only thing it held was a faded baby book. He’d left it here because it seemed fitting that his childhood home held the first memories that were diligently recorded by the mother whose death neither he nor Nathaniel had ever quite gotten over.
On the dark days in his teenage years, when he and his father would clash violently and then retreat to their respective wings, he’d pull out this book and remember the woman whose neat script detailed adventures she and baby Beckett had together. His first staggering steps in the grand hall that, to his mother’s delight, turned into running almost immediately. Playing hide-and-seek in the massive gardens behind the mansion. How he used to tell his mother he loved her before he went to bed every night and beg for one more story.
The book didn’t contain the memories that came later. Chocolate chip pancakes for breakfast in the kitchen. His mother’s endless patience as she taught him to read on the comfortable couch in the library downstairs. Playing tag and running through the house, filling the empty halls with laughter.
The only foundation he had for those memories was the house itself. The house was what drew him back time and time again. He made an effort to visit at least once a month when he was in town, to walk through the halls and reinforce his memories of his mother, to talk to the staff and ensure that they were taking good care of the place. To remember that he was more than just Nathaniel King’s son. He was her son, too.
After today he’d no longer have access to Thistledown. He’d have to find a different way to make sure he didn’t forget a single thing. To keep the memories from fading over time.
He slid the baby book into the backpack before Samara could ask any questions about it. It was one thing to share a few spare details about his mother. It was entirely another to lay himself bare for this woman who ultimately couldn’t be trusted.
Beckett hitched the backpack onto his shoulder. “Let’s go.”
“That’s it?”
He stopped in the doorway. “What’s it?”
“That’s…” She motioned vaguely at him. “You took two pictures and a baby book. This room…” Another wave to encompass the room. “You don’t want anything else?”
He almost didn’t answer, but the thought seemed to bother her so much he found himself explaining. “It’s all just…shit. The house is what holds the memories, and I can’t take that with me.”
