Page 17 of When You Wish Upon a Wideout

“He was kind of dreamy,” she told her mother without looking up from the yearbook. “Eventhen.”

Sienna sighed and stomped over to the bed, taking the book from Grace. It had been over a week since they had gone to the game, and in just a short time, Sienna had dodged many of her daughter’s questions about Beau.

At the closet, Sienna slipped the yearbook inside a box on the floor. “These don’t belong to you. And it’s late,” she said, lifting the box and holding it against her hip.

“He was your boyfriend, right?”

Sienna looked around at what used to be her old room, focusing on the window—the one Beau had snuck in and out of what felt like hundreds of times.

“No,” she lied.

“Are you sure? Henry says—”

“I was there, you weren’t.” She stared her daughter down until she slid back against the pillows, grabbing a book from her nightstand.

“The Notebook?Again?”

Grace shrugged. “Not all of us are cold-hearted shrews like you. Some of us appreciate romance,” she teased her mother as Sienna dropped the box and moved to sit on the bed.

“I’mnota shrew. And I read that book too, once upon a time. And I watched the movie about three hundred times with you.”

“You’re right, you’re not a shrew.” Grace’s eyes pierced Sienna’s over the paperback. “But you don’t believe in love.”

Ouch.

Sienna tilted her head. “Just because I don’t believe inthiskind of love,” she said, fingering the spine, “doesn’t mean I don’t believe in love.”

Grace raised an eyebrow.

“I loveyou,” Sienna reminded her, smoothing down a cowlick of Grace’s pixie cut with a smile. It reminded her of the wild ways her hair grew in as a baby.

Rolling her eyes, Grace turned a page. “That’s different and you know it. When was the last time you went on a date?”

Sienna couldn’t remember a proper date that involved a door being opened for her, wine, and a nice meal, but there were occasional late nights after work with Dylan Lockhart, who she had grown to tolerate more since high school, including a handful of times a year in bed.

“It’s late. And a school night.” She pulled the book from Grace’s hands and returned it to the nightstand, her hand brushing against the coin from the game.

“Mom?” Grace peeked out from the duvet. “I love you too.”

Turning off the light, Sienna shut the door, took the box to her room—what used to be her father’s—and dropped it into the closet before heading to the kitchen.

“She’s out?” Henry asked from the kitchen table.

Shuffling over to the freezer, Sienna pulled out a pint of ice cream before joining Henry at the table. “She’ll sleep through her alarm tomorrow, I bet.”

“You know what’s better than ice cream? That milkshake you should’ve ordered the other day,” her brother said, crunching on a chip.

Sienna lifted her eyes to his and brought a heavy spoonful of chocolate ice cream to her mouth.

“Sienna,” Henry said with a sigh. “Beau never did anythingwrong.”

You’re right,Sienna wanted to say.He stopped doing anything.She scraped at the carton with the spoon. “He should’ve come for Dad’s funeral.”

He should’ve come back for me.

Henry sat back, folding his arm. “Maybe, yeah. That would’ve been nice. But it was years ago. We’ve all lived a hundred lives since then.”

Sienna couldn’t argue. At thirty-three, her exhausted mind and body felt more like it was approaching her midsixties. A baby at nineteen, losing her father and buying a business in her twenties—those events aged her slowly. But Sienna could remember the moment she began to age on fast forward.

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