Zoe
We spread everything out on the long workbench in the clubhouse garage, every scrap that had survived the fire, every box my uncle had salvaged before the investigators finished, every drawer I'd emptied from my father's desk before I ever knew what any of it meant. Mason offered to help sort through it with me, and I said yes before I'd even finished thinking about whether I wanted company or not.
"You don't have to do this," I told him, once we'd been at it a while, both of us cross-legged on the concrete floor surrounded by singed papers and half-melted photo frames.
"I know." He didn't look up from the stack of receipts he was sorting through, methodical in a way that matched everything else about him. "I want to."
We worked in comfortable quiet for a long stretch, the kind tha
