The wooden box before me pushed against my thighs, and I felt the summer sun piercing my face, spitting its light against my skin. Without turning back toward him, I nodded. “I know.”

A heavy sigh fell from his lips as he turned to reenter the chapel. I sat there for a while longer, silently asking the sun to melt me into a pile of nothingness on the steps that afternoon. People wandered by the building, yet no one stopped to stare. They were too busy living their lives to notice that mine had somehow came to a halt.

The church door reopened, only this time it was Henry who came to sit next to me. He didn’t say much, but he sat far enough away to avoid making me feel too uncomfortable. Reaching into his suit’s pocket, he pulled out a pack of cigarettes and lit one up.

A cloud of smoke blew from his lips, and I watched the hypnotic patterns it made in the air before dissipating away.

“Don’t you think it’s a bit morose to be smoking on the steps of a church?”

Henry flicked some of the ashes off the end of his cigarette before talking. “Yeah, well, seeing how the world just buried one of my daughters, I think I can have a smoke on these steps and say, ‘Fuck you, world.’ At least for today.”

I laughed, sarcasm filling every inch of my chuckle. “It seems a little bold for you to call us your daughters after eighteen years of only birthday calls and holiday gift cards.” Henry’s driving down here from Wisconsin was the first time I’d seen him in quite some time.

He hadn’t made it his mission in life to have a #1 Dad coffee mug, and I’d learned to be okay with that. But for him to come up here, today of all days, and play the grieving father role seemed a bit dramatic, even for the guy smoking the cigarettes.

He sighed heavily, not replying. We sat and people watched for the longest time. Long enough for me to feel bad for the way I’d snapped at him.

“Sorry,” I muttered, glancing his way. “I didn’t mean that.” I wasn’t sure that he even held it against me. I guess sometimes it was easier to be mean than to be hurt.

Before long, Henry dived into his true reason for joining me outside. “I spoke with your mom. She’s having a pretty hard time.” No comment from me. Of course she was having a hard time! Her favorite daughter was dead! He continued. “We agreed that it might be best if you were to come stay with me. Start and finish your senior year in Wisconsin.”

This time, I really laughed. “Yeah, okay, Henry.” At least he still had a sense of humor going on. An odd sense of humor, but still funny. Rotating my body toward him, I saw the somber look filling his green eyes—the same shade of green as mine. And Gabby’s. My stomach hurt. My eyes gained water. “You’re serious? She doesn’t want me here anymore?”

“It’s not that…” His voice shook, hoping to not offend me.

But it was that. She didn’t want me anymore. Why else would she want to ship me off to the land of cows, cheese, and beer? I knew we were having a hard time, but that’s what families did after deaths. You had hard times. You walked on eggshells. You yelled when you had to and cried during screams. You fell apart—together.

The stomachaches from the past few weeks were back, and I hated myself for feeling faint. Not in front of Henry. Don’t pass out in front of him.

I pushed myself up from the step, holding the wooden box under my left arm. Dusting off the back of my dress with my right hand, I moved toward the church. “It’s fine,” I lied, my mind muddied with panicked thoughts of what was to come. “Besides…who wants to be wanted anyway?”

It had been a week since the funeral, and Mom had been staying with Jeremy for most of that week. To be honest, it wasn’t exactly how I’d imagined spending the last few weeks of summer—crying alone in a house all hours of a day. I was officially pathetic.

On the plus side, I hadn’t cried for the past ten minutes. So that was a pretty big victory.

After walking down the hallway, I stopped and leaned against the doorframe of what used to be our shared bedroom. There it was, resting on my dresser—her small box of wonders. Gabby’s whole life, or at least what she’d dreamed it would someday be, was inside that box—I just knew it. Call it a gut reaction, call it Twin ESP, but I just knew.

It was a simple, small, wooden treasure box, and I’d been instructed to open it the night of the funeral, yet up until now, I’d only stared at it on my dresser.

I lifted the box and found the key taped to the bottom. Ripping the key off, I moved over to the twin-sized bed on the right side of the room, only glancing at the other twin bed on the left. My body melted into the hard mattress, and I placed the key in the locket.

I opened the treasure box at an unhurried speed. The breath I’d been holding released into the small space, and a few tears fell from my eyes. Swiftly, I wiped them again and took a deep inhale.

Two seconds. I hadn’t cried for the past two seconds. So that was a pretty small victory.

Inside the box were an absurd amount of envelopes. There were a ton of Gabby’s old guitar picks sitting on top of the envelopes. She’d been an amazing musician, and she’d always tried to teach me to play that damn guitar of hers, but all it did was hurt my fingers and waste my time when I could have been working on my uncompleted novel.

I instantly felt bad for not having tried harder to learn to play the guitar, because she’d sure taken the time to help co-write my novel, which I was certain would never be completed now.

Resting in the corner of the box was a ring—the promise ring Bentley had given her. I ran it against my fingers for a while before placing it back into the box. I hoped he was doing all right. He was the closest thing to a brother I had and I wished he would be able to get back to himself, the fun loving guy he always was.

The rest of the things in the wooden box were letters—a ton of letters. There were at least forty envelopes sitting inside, each one numbered and marked with words, each one sealed with a heart. The one on the very top read, ‘Read Me First.’ Placing the box on the mattress, I picked up that envelope and slowly tore the top open.

Little Sister,

My fingers flew to my lips as I gasped at the note from Gabby. I felt conflicted because I wanted to cry from seeing her handwriting yet I wanted to laugh at the sight of her calling me ‘little sister.’ She’d beaten me into the world by fifteen minutes, and she’d never let me live that down—always calling me ‘little sister’ or ‘kid.’ I kept reading, wanting to rush through each and every envelope in the box, wanting to feel her connection to me right then and there.