Boxes, shoved to the side, made the room feel tiny, which it never had before.
“How much are you planning to get rid of?” he asked. This house had been the same the whole time he’d known Lena, and even in its current jumbled state he could see the place he knew. He wondered if she was going to find it more difficult than she was letting on.
Lena waved a hand. “As much as I need to. Probably won’t be as much as it looks like right now. Everything I have are hand-me-downs. I never got a chance to do this place the way I wanted, except for some curtains and small things. I feel like the caretaker of a museum sometimes. The Winston Family Museum. There are a number of things I’m attached to, but most of it is just here. No history, no old memories, no meaning.”
“I don’t know whether to say that’s good or that’s sad.”
“Both,” she said wryly. “Vicki gets it next. It might as well be more to her liking.”
Dan leaned forward, holding his mug between both hands as he rested his elbows on his knees. “Hey, you’ve got a lot of good years left. Don’t be talking like that.”
“Like what? I’m almost fifty-five, young by the reckoning of most. I might have another thirty years. Then again, I could slip on ice this next winter and be done. You never know, Dan.”
“No.” This conversation was taking a maudlin turn, and he wondered if it had to do with Vicki. Not that she had started it, but maybe what had happened to her niece had caused Lena to start thinking about these things. He sought another avenue.
“So Vicki is your sister’s daughter? I know you told me, but I’ve never had the instincts of a genealogist.”
Lena barked a laugh. “That’s right. She took off out of here when she was eighteen, and never came back. I used to go visit her, the way I went to visit Vicki.”
He began to remember stories from over the years. Shortly after Vicki had graduated from college, Lena’s sister had died. Vicki’s father had apparently vanished from the scene before she was born. “Lou, wasn’t it? Your sister? Skydiving accident?”
Lena smiled faintly. “Live it while you have it, that’s my motto. I just chose a less risky way of life. Lou, on the other hand, had a whole bucket list of wild things she wanted to do once Vicki was old enough.”
Dan hesitated, but for some reason he wanted a clear picture of the situation. Maybe it was just the cop in him. “And no family on Vicki’s husband’s side?”
“Hal grew up in foster care. Near as I could tell, he felt closer to the Police Athletic League than any of his foster families, and there were a lot of them.”
“So that leaves you.”
“It sure does. And since I was never blessed with a family of my own, I’m considering myself blessed right now.”
Dan grinned. “I don’t get why you weren’t snapped up.”
Lena arched a brow. “Oh, there were snappers. I just kept throwing them back in the river.”
He unleashed a belly laugh. “I love you, Lena.”
She rolled her eyes. “Just not like that. I get it.” Then she joined his laughter.
* * *
Upstairs, Vicki heard the laughter and decided that she needed to go down. After all, she’d made this move, wrenching her daughter away from the only home she’d ever known, so they could start fresh. That meant she had to rejoin the world again.
She stopped in the bathroom, wiped away the tears and applied cold water to her eyes. After a couple minutes, she realized that she couldn’t erase the puffiness. They were going to know she had been weeping.
Oh, well. She’d do it again countless times. Grief was nothing to be ashamed of, and if it made Dan uneasy...well, he didn’t have to stay. She took a brush to her hair, smoothing it back into a neat ponytail, then stiffened herself to face the world.
She entered the living room and found Lena sitting on a rocker and Dan sitting on the old couch. Habit led her to take her usual end of the recliner sofa, where she curled her legs under her.
“Want some coffee?” Vicki asked. “Just made a pot.”
“I’ll get it. Thanks, Lena.”
Her aunt stood. “Stay right there. I’m not the one who spent weeks moving. Be right back.”
Which left her alone with Dan. He sat with his legs splayed, the mug cradled in both hands, his elbows resting on his thighs.
“How long did you drive today?” he asked. “Austin’s quite a piece.”
“We broke it up. There’s just so long you can keep a four-year-old cooped up in a vehicle. We left Laramie this morning.”
“Not too bad, then.”
“No.” Which kind of ended the conversation. She wanted to sigh as she realized that she’d lost the basic skill of making small talk. Over the past year, her friends and Hal’s had taken up all the slack on that front, leaving her to join in when she felt like it. She hadn’t filled any gaps or silences.
“Your daughter is cute,” Dan said after a pause. “Adorable. Is she really attached to that teddy bear?”
“Off and on. Not like when she was a baby and she needed a particular blanket or stuffed animal. During the trip, the bear was handy.” At least Vicki had managed more than a single word.
God, she felt so out of place and out of sync. All the weeks of preparation, the long drive, and now she had arrived, and felt as if she’d been cast adrift.
“You ever been here before?” he asked. “I don’t remember seeing you, but I only moved in next door three years ago.”
Lena returned with a mug for Vicki, and the coffeepot to pour fresh for everyone. “Never visited me,” she remarked. “No, I had to fly to Austin to see her.” She placed the pot on an old table and returned to her rocker.
Vicki wondered if she should apologize. Her head was swimming, trying to order things, make sense of everything, and she had no idea what she should say.
“Not that I wanted it any other way,” Lena said, her eyes twinkling. “I got to travel the world. Well, Texas, anyway. I even got to meet the oversize Texas ego.”
Helplessly, Vicki felt a small laugh escape her. “It’s a state of mind, you know.”
“I noticed,” Lena said tartly. “Now, I’m not saying they don’t have a lot to be proud of, but if you ask me, it was really something back there for a while when Texans who’d moved away sent for bags of Texas dirt to put under delivery tables so their babies could be born on Texas soil. And the state issued honorary birth certificates.”
Dan appeared astonished. “For real?”
“Unless I misread the story.” Lena looked at Vicki. “Are they still doing that?”
“I have no idea, honestly. I thought it was just a brief fad when it occurred, and I’m positive the state isn’t in the business of giving honorary birth certificates.”
Lena chuckled. “Well, of course it would turn out to be a Texas-sized story.”
“It’s a good one, though.” Dan smiled. “It probably even grew legs for a while.”
“It grew legs for me,” Lena said. “Now I’m wondering how many times I told that story. I may have a lot of apologizing to do.”
“Don’t bother,” said Dan. “It’s a good yarn, and apparently at least a few people must have sent for Texas dirt.”
“That much was true,” Vicki