Page 99 of Before We Fell

Her eyes went wide, and her voice turned soft. “You do?”

“Mm-hmm.” I nodded. “I pulled all my bins out of the attic the other day, and my tree. I was going to put it up tonight. Put on some Christmas carols, decorate the house.” I shot a grin toward Noah. His lips were twitching into a smile of his own. “You probably wouldn’t think that was any fun though, would you?”

“I love Christmas trees,” Riley said. Her voice was part breathy, part sheer excitement.

“Well, I figured your uncle Noah wouldn’t have thought to get all that stuff for his house. So if it’s all right with him, what do you say? Want to help me out?”

“Can we, Uncle Noah?” she all but squealed. She clapped her hands repeatedly.

“I don’t know,” he drawled teasingly. “Seems pretty late tonight and you’ve had such a long day.”

“But I’m not tired at all! I swear it.” Her eyes darted to me, still curved to face her. “Do you have hot chocolate? Mom and Dad always gave me hot chocolate when we put up our tree.”

My hand in Noah’s squeezed tight. She rarely brought up her parents. Today, she’d talked about them non-stop. More than once Krystal had vanished, sniffing while complaining of all the dust in the air.

I tapped my finger to my lips. “I might. You probably don’t like marshmallows with yours though, do you?”

“Sure I do.” She nodded frantically, and then, she leaned forward and winked. Lowering her voice, she sounded like she was about to impart a top secret to me. “And sometimes, Mom even let me put extra chocolate chips in it too.”

“Hmm. Well, I guess it’s a good thing I was going to make chocolate chip cookies this week. Because I have a whole bag of mini-chips you could probably have.”

“Wow,” she breathed. “Awesome.”

Noah tossed her a smile through the rearview mirror. “Sounds like we’re going to Lauren’s house, then, huh Squirt.”

“Yeah, we are.”

I sat back in my seat, laughing softly. Man, sometimes that girl was so sweet she made my teeth ache.

“That okay?” I asked quietly. I hadn’t even thought of asking Noah first.

“Spending the night at your place decorating your tree instead of spending it alone? It’s hardly a difficult task.” To emphasize, he pulled our clasped hands to his lips and kissed the back of my hand. When he pulled them away, he glanced at me. “I love you. And I love how much you love Riley.”

“Wow,” I said, imitating Riley’s voice from earlier. “That’s a lot of love.”

He chuckled, pressed my hand to his lips again. “Yeah, that makes me pretty lucky.”

Odd how I’d been thinking I was the lucky one in all of this.

I settled back into my seat and it wasn’t long before he was pulling into my driveway. Riley hopped out of the truck as soon as it was in park, beating us both to the front door. My porch lights were on, as I’d left them, and she danced a little jig while she waited for us.

“Come on, come on,” she shouted. “There are ornaments calling my name!”

I already had my keys in my hand, and Noah took them from me like he always did. Ever since Halloween, he’d always unlocked my door and entered first, giving a sweeping glance to make sure everything was okay before he allowed Riley or I to enter.

Shawn hadn’t called with any news, and the few times I called the station, they’d said they were still looking into things, but at this point, I wasn’t expecting anything to be done.

A break-in where the only thing stolen was a child’s drawing wasn’t exactly high on the priority list. Plus, it’d been my bad at leaving the garage door unlocked. Perhaps it was just a kid, doing something stupid. Trying to get away with doing something dangerous and chickening out, or growing a conscience before stealing anything of value.

That’s what I told myself at least, to help me sleep at night and not give in to the fear or feelings of being violated in my own home.

I waited out on the porch while Noah did his perfunctory sweep of my house, and when he came back to the door, his face had paled.

“What is it?” I asked.

“Nothing. House is fine. It’s just, well, you have a lot of bins.” I laughed at his shock. “Do you put all of this up in one night?”

Eight bins was sort of excessive for my small house.

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