Page 31 of Wreck Me

In the end, his curiosity got the better of him. He had to know how she’d managed to do this. He reached a hand under the bed and moved it about until his fingers touched something solid. At the exact same speed with which his fingers wrapped around the object and slid it out, the realization of what it was dawned on him.

For months, he’d planned to give the house one final going over before it was lost to progress, but Ginny had thwarted him. Finally, the opportunity had landed in his lap, and he’d been so startled by the house itself, he’d completely forgotten his search. In the end, it hadn’t mattered, because Ginny had already found it—his mother’s long-missing, and presumed lost forever, family photo album.

Grasping the album with slightly shaking hands, Nico’s out-of-body sensation kicked in hard. Relief and sadness coursed through him in equal measure – relief for having found it, sadness for what it meant to him. It appeared undamaged. A mottled brown, faux leather cover over standard-sized album sheets, the unassuming word “Photos” embossed in faded gold on the front.

Ginny noticed the mood change. “You okay? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

Of a sort, he thought. He paused a moment to collect himself before answering. “Where did you find this?”

“It’s kind of a funny story. I’d been in the house for a month or so, and I was surprised to discover that the kitchen booth seat wasn’t also a storage cabinet, because most of them are. When I looked closer, I saw it had at one time been used for storage, because there were dents where hinges used to be, but the lid was nailed shut.”

Nico started in his chair. “There were actual nails? Where?”

“On the underside edge.”

“But…people would have seen those.”

“They were very hard to see because they’d been recessed, puttied, and painted over.”

Nico frowned. No wonder he and Vince hadn’t been able to find the album in all their searches. His mother had gone to great lengths. “I see. And this album was inside?”

“Yep. Plus, a wedding dress and lady’s shoes, and a man’s suit and shoes. The suit is sort of standard, but the dress is exquisitely hand beaded. I had them both professionally boxed up. They’re on the top shelf of my closet if you want to see them.”

He swallowed hard. His parents’ wedding clothes. He didn’t know she’d kept them, but of course she would have.

“So…you used these pictures to decorate the house?”

Her head bobbed with enthusiasm. “I mean, what a find! There are photos of every room, every wall. Someone really loved this house, really wanted to document it. There’re pictures of the family too. Wanna see?”

Still staring hard at the cover, Nico was barely registering her words. Not only was he glad to find the album for personal reasons, but it might help his mother find her memories again, even if only briefly. But how could he do that without tellingGinny the truth? A gentle tug on the album brought him back to the present. “Sure, sure,” he said, releasing it to her.

She flipped through several of the stiff pages, stopping on the first of the family photos. How long had it been since he’d seen these? Two and a half decades? On rainy days and quiet evenings, he and his brother snuggled side-by-side on the floor or in one of their beds, staring at the pictures. Then one day it no longer sat in its spot on the bookshelf. His mother had proclaimed it gone, lost forever, and that had been that. But Nico had never forgotten it.

Gazing again at the first set of old photos, Nico knew the separation of years made no difference. The images were burned into his memory. To Ginny, of course, they were just some random, smiling family.

She pointed at the top left picture. In it, they all sat around the kitchen booth. Nico’s three-year-old face grinned goofily back at its adult self.

“Look, here they are,” she said excitedly, as if introducing him to her best friends. “These are the people who put the love in this house. A mom, a dad, two boys, and another lady—maybe a sister of the mom or dad? At first, I thought this child was a girl, the hair is so long, but in the later pictures you can see its two boys, twins even.”

Nico couldn’t help an inner chuckle. Vince had been so terrified of scissors that he’d refused a haircut. That all ended the day a well-meaning, gray-haired lady at the department store had gushed over how cute Nico’s “sister” would look in a pink polka dot dress. Vince cried all the way to the barber shop, where he demanded to look like a boy.

Ginny patted the photo lightly with the tip of one finger. “I could probably find out who they are if I looked into it, but I haven’t wanted to. I like keeping them preserved here, just theway they were. Real people are so much messier than imaginary ones. I like their anonymity.”

“Smart move,” Nico said. He’d intended for the words to sound casual, but emotion was pulling his vocal cords taut as a violin’s bow.

Ginny trained her green eyes at him, one eyebrow just barely arched. “Are you going to tell me what’s going on?”

Darn. Get ahold of yourself, Nico!He wasn’t usually so easy to read. “It’s nothing. I’m just agreeing. People are messy.” He raised a finger in the air as if a thought had just come to him. “I wonder, though, if I might borrow the album for a day? I promise to bring it back.”

This was a lie, of course. He would never bring it back.

Ginny lay the album in her lap, her pretty lips pressed tightly over her teeth, apparently weighing his request. She opened the album to a double page of family photos he hadn’t seen in forever, and Nico found it difficult not to stare. He so wanted to lean forward and experience those images again, but he couldn’t let himself, not yet. First, he had to get her to “loan” him the album. She might never do that if she knew what it meant to him.

“Nico,” she said finally, “you went white as a sheet when you pulled the album out. That’s not the sort of thing guys with hardly anything in their medicine cabinets do. What’s going on?”

He lifted his hands in a shrug. “Nothing. I just didn't know what I’d find under your bed!” When she looked at him skeptically, he added, “And I like vintage things.”

She resettled her small frame against her pillow but kept her eyes firmly on him. “We both know that’s a lie.” She tapped her fingers on the album pages for several seconds, staring at him now with narrowed eyes. Nico squirmed internally, hoping she wouldn’t make the connection.

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