“People can stop being in a house without stopping being in a family.”
My knees went weak.
I wanted to run onto the stage and hug him.
But Ethan wasn’t done.
He placed the house beside the other pieces.
Then he turned the wooden case around.
Words had been burned into the inside of the lid.
The letters weren’t perfectly straight.
Some were darker.
One was larger than the others.
I leaned forward to read them.
CLAIRE DOESN’T MATTER BECAUSE SHE GETS THERE FIRST.
Underneath:
SHE MATTERS BECAUSE SHE ALWAYS FINDS HER WAY BACK.
I stared at the words.
Ethan looked at me.
“You always come back.”
My throat closed.
“When Mom was sad, you came back to the kitchen.”
I remembered.
“When I got lost at the county fair, you came back for me.”
He’d wandered away when he was nine.
We found him beside a lemonade stand less than ten minutes later.
