Not being able to shove him in one of the boxes all people around here fit into makes me even more nervous.
“Tinley Holland?” he asks, his hand out for me to shake.
I pull my sweater tighter around me, locking my hands under my arms. “Yes?”
“I’m Brooks Morgan.” He drops his hand, his smile never faltering like he never expected me to take it in the first place. “I’m here to get measurements.”
“Oh, okay. Umm.” I dart a look over my shoulder. “Can you give me just a moment?”
How am I still in my pajamas?
“Oh. I’m not going to come inside. I’m here to measure the yard.”
“The yard?” I hope this poor guy doesn’t think that this is the right neighborhood to build a pool or something.
“Yep.” He smiles again.
“For like a pool?”
He chuckles, the sound in most any other situation would calm me, but I don’t think there’s anything that could ease the stress in my shoulders right now.
“I’m going to bulldoze the house.” There isn’t a hint of malicious intent in his blue gaze, but it doesn’t stop his statement from slamming into me.
“Wh-What?”
“There are rumors about this neighborhood being the next spot in Houston likely for gentrification. I’m trying to get in on the front end of that. I’ve been snapping up houses all around here.” He looks back to the street where his car, a black BMW of all things, is parked on the street. “Do you think that will be safe out here if I go around back?”
“Depends on who sees it,” I mutter.
“Thank you for your time, Ms. Holland.”
He steps off the porch, looking out over the small yard, and I know he doesn’t see it like I do. Suddenly all those thoughts about this not being home change.
Where his feet are planted on the cracked driveway is where Alex learned to dribble a basketball. I blame those cracks for his continued inability to do it well and thank baseball for being his outlet.
The flower beds are overgrown now, but Mom spent so many hours nurturing them, so we had a little bit of color in our otherwise dark and cloudy world.
The back porch holds the secrets of so many conversations I had with Mom after Dad died, after I didn’t get asked on a second date because the man wasn’t interested in a woman with a child, and after the doctors delivered the blow that they would stop her treatments.
This is home, and according to the brief text from Cooper that I got last night, I only have thirty more days here.
Tears burn my eyes, and I do my best to wipe them away. Mr. Morgan nods to me once before walking back to his car. Minutes is all it takes to evaluate what will be left after he strips the lot of everything.
He wasn’t here long enough, but how can he know that Mom hand-painted the mailbox or that I found the massive tree in the front yard so much smaller many years ago, tossed in a ditch a couple blocks from my work. I almost take a step further on the porch intent on flagging him down to ask him if he knows it produces the best lemons. To inform him that the wood shutters on the windows were the last thing my dad painted on the house before we moved to Dallas. How can he tear the place down when the counter in the hall bathroom is where I found out I was pregnant or the curb he’s pulling away from is where my heart was shattered? How can he wipe away so much? Did they not tell him that the very room my mother took her last breath in was the room her mother did the same?
My hands tremble with the urge to call Ignacio and beg him to fix it.
Leaving was one thing. Moving somewhere else would be hard, but the place would still hold all of those memories.
Gone? I can’t even wrap my head around so much history being scooped up and carried away in an industrial dumpster.
I hate that he’s the first person I think of when I need help, and it isn’t just now. There were times before he knew the truth that I was tempted to try and hunt him down. After my dad died was one time, when my mom got sick another.
I didn’t want to be alone.
But after losing Dad I had Mom, and I should have Cooper in my corner, but my brother has never cared about family, blood, or obligations.
He wants his half of the money and that’s it. Just like Mr. Morgan, the memories this house holds aren’t important to him. His nephew isn’t a concern, and I should’ve accepted all of this by now, but I just can’t seem to.
I turn back around, heading into the house and locking the world away at my back.
Ignacio has been gone over a week, calling to speak with Alex every day since he left, but never to me. He talks to me, but it consists of asking how his son is doing and if I need anything. When I tell him everything is fine, he wants Alex.
I should be happy, should be grateful he’s maintaining the relationship with him, but I feel all alone again.
I should be used to being lonely by now, right?
Chapter 27
Ignacio
“How did it go?” I ask Brooks the second he gets back to my grandfather’s house. “Did she give you much grief?”
“I know why you like her so much. That woman is smoking hot even in her pajama pants and slouchy sweater.”
I grind my teeth together. “Did you see the holes in the living room wall? Her brother did that shit the last time he was there. I’m thinking we’ll need at least a month for repairs.
“Didn’t even go in the house,” he says right before taking a big
