001

LEAH

“Get packing. We’re leaving in an hour.”

I froze with a Cheeto halfway to my mouth and turned to face my mother, certain I’d misheard.

“What?”

“You heard me. Get moving or I’m leaving without you.” She repeated.

My mouth opened and nothing useful came out. “But I thought—I thought—”

“You thought what?” She crossed her arms, hip cocked against the doorframe. “That I was joking last month when I told you I was getting remarried? Your father is out of my life. We’ve been divorced four years, Leah.”

She turned and dragged a suitcase into the living room like the conversation was already finished.

I set the Cheetos down. My appetite had gone somewhere else entirely. “So it’s really over? No talking things through, no—nothing?”

She stopped and looked at me, and something in her face went flat, the way it always did when she thought I was being difficult on purpose. “People move on Leah. I moved on. Your father moved on—he’s seeing someone, I guarantee it and I am in love with someone else.” She said the last part like a door closing, then vanished down the hallway toward her room.

I stood there a second longer than I needed to before I made myself walk to my room.

My wardrobe doors stuck the way they always had. I yanked them open and started folding clothes into the open suitcase on my bed, movements automatic, like my hands knew what to do even though the rest of me hadn’t caught up yet.

Four years. It had been four years since the judge signed the papers and ripped our family completely down the middle. When the split happened, my twin brother had chosen to stay behind with our father in New York, keeping the roots we had spent our entire lives growing. I had chosen to be with my mother, packing our lives into boxes to move across the country. Through every single day of the silence that followed, a small stubborn part of me had deeply hoped that the distance would make them remember what they lost, that they would find a way to come back together. But I had been completely wrong.

“Don’t forget anything.” She appeared in my doorway, watching me fold a sweater with more force than the fabric deserved.

I stopped folding a sweater, keeping my back to her as I tried to swallow the lump in my throat. "Who is he?" I asked, the question slipping out before I could lose my nerve. "This lover of yours."

Her whole face changed. A smile broke across it, soft and a little embarrassed.“Mr. Romano. Dario.” She said his name like it tasted good. “He’s Italian. A billionaire. I am so lucky to have found him, Leah.”

I studied her face, taking in the sudden youthfulness in her expression, the complete absence of the exhaustion that usually shadowed her features. If this monumental shift was what it took to make her happy, then I would force myself to swallow the bitter taste of my own resistance.

“Well. Whatever makes you happy mom.”

I meant it. Mostly.

“Does he know he’s inheriting a daughter with the marriage?” I asked.

She laughed, actually laughed, like the question itself was silly. “Of course he knows. I’m hardly going to hide my own children from the man I’m marrying. He knows all about you. And can’t wait to meet you.”

Something cold slid down my spine. “Can’t wait to meet me?”

She nodded, already turning to leave. “I told him about your artwork. He thought it sounded wonderful.”

I went back to folding, because there wasn’t anything else to do with my hands, and an hour later I was sitting in the passenger seat of her car, watching the neighborhood I’d grown up in shrink in the side mirror.

“Anything you need before we get there?” she asked, eyes on the road.

“Nothing.” My voice came out thinner than I wanted it to. “I’m fine.”

I wasn’t. My knee wouldn’t stop bouncing.

She glanced over, caught it, and laughed softly. “Don’t be nervous.”

Easy for her to say. She wasn’t the one about to move into a stranger’s house and call him something close to family.

The car turned up a long paved drive, and the house came into view, I didn’t have time to process it, a white stone, columns windows tall enough to fit two of me stacked on top of each other.

My mouth actually fell open.

“Close your mouth baby,” she said, laughing again, delighted with herself.

Men in dark suits that weren’t quite suits met the car before it had fully stopped, greeting my mother by name, already reaching for the luggage before either of us said a word. She led the way inside like she’d been walking these halls for years instead of weeks.

“Isn’t it beautiful?” she asked, arms spread like she owned the place already.

“It’s beautiful,” I agreed, because it was, and because there wasn’t anything else true to say yet.

“Go look around. I’ll get the bags sorted.”

She disappeared down a hallway, heels clicking against floor, and I stood alone in an entryway bigger than our old apartment’s living room, kitchen, and hallway combined. My goodness.

I made myself move. Traced my fingers along a bannister that curved up toward a second floor I hadn’t seen yet, past rooms with furniture that looked like nobody had ever actually sat on it.

A wall of framed photographs stopped me near what looked like a study.

The first one held a man in a dark suit, silver at the temples, a smile that looked practiced. I muttered it under my breath without meaning to. “Mr. Romano.” For sure he had to be the one.

I moved to the next frame, expecting more of the same — some formal family photo, maybe an old wedding portrait.

My breath left me before I understood why.

The face in the second photo wasn’t Dario Romano’s anymore.

It was Asher’s.

Our school’s star hockey captain. The boy every girl in that building had memorized his biography without trying. The one I’d spent years pretending I hadn’t noticed, because noticing him had never once ended well for anyone who tried.

I stood frozen in front of the frame, his name falling out of my mouth on nothing but air.

“Asher?”