Chapter 30
Due to the timing of the one auction and three estate sales Madeline wanted to hit, they needed to do the buying leg of the trip first.
“It’s for the best anyway. That way, if you’re horrified by me and need to flee, the whole trip won’t have been a waste.
” Madeline said it like she was joking, but Grant suspected she actually thought he would bail on her in her time of need.
Well, she had another thing coming if she thought that.
He would work his hardest never to disappoint her again.
When he raised his eyebrow about the latter, Madeline grinned and explained how popular it was again. It wasn’t until she mentioned the prices some pieces would fetch that he was won over, though.
“Let me guess . . . Christmas?”
“You bet.” Madeline’s eyes shone. “They’d sell anytime, but if I can restrain myself, think how awesome my November and December windows will be.”
And then there were some interesting furniture pieces, like an avocado green hassock and two 70s floor lamps with stands that looked like gold vines and huge, orange, pumpkin-shaped light-globes, plus too many other pieces to mention.
Watching Madeline act casual about each item she bid on or bartered for and won—only to then squeal with glee like a little kid over her “treasures” once they were alone together in the van—was quickly becoming one of Grant’s favorite activities in the world.
And his least favorite was sharing various hotel rooms with her because they each slept alone in their adjacent queen-size beds.
He understood it, just didn’t like it. It wasn’t even about sex, though he’d be lying if he said that wasn’t on this mind, too.
Yet he’d be equally content—well, maybe not equally, but content enough—just to hold her.
Sometimes he sensed she was awake too, though she never spoke, and he’d wonder if she had similar longings. Or he’d hope.
All too soon—in a blink, it seemed—the buying part of the trip was over.
“The truck’s packed tight, all right, but the trailer’s barely a quarter full,” he’d protested. “We could go through the online buy and sell pages in the area and see if there’s anything worth picking.”
“You’ll be as addicted as I am soon.” She patted his hand—and a spark of electricity snapped between them.
She whipped her hand back, looking abashed or ashamed or something, which Grant didn’t understand.
He didn’t have time to dwell, though, because she continued in a distracted, musing tone, “We’ll be lucky if everything fits as it is. ”
The comment confused him further because, despite her use of the word “we,” she hadn’t sounded like she was talking to him.
*
Arriving at the twenty-four-hour-access storage company in Langley at 6:00 a.m., a time Madeline suggested because it was going to take them “a while,” Grant tried to keep his surprise in check.
Madeline had not one, not two, but three 10 X 20 spaces rented.
With taxes, that was close to a thousand bucks a month.
No wonder she said the money would come in handy.
He couldn’t believe she had enough stuff to fill them.
Just one of them, packed properly—and Madeline was a master—should be able to hold the contents of a furnished five-bedroom house.
Then she opened the first one, and he understood why she’d needed three. And why she’d had insight into his dad. Madeline had not so much “stored” her family’s furniture and household goods as she had . . . tossed them into a dark, out-of-the-way space and slammed and locked a door on them.
The second storage space was the same. Stuffed with absolutely no rhyme or reason, everything piled wherever it had fit and deserted.
The third made Grant inhale sharply. It was the worst by far, but also strangely beautiful in a searing, painful kind of way.
It was almost empty but what it did hold was no doubt going to be the biggest mental hurdle for Madeline yet: a perfect reconstruction of what had been Lauren’s room.
She’d been a university student, just completed her first year and about to start her second, only “home” for the summer during the year of the fatal accident.
That much Grant knew from the little Madeline would ever say, but the room had a look and feel he imagined many kids’ rooms had when they’d moved out but were back home regularly, and their room was still their room.
It was a hodgepodge of childhood mementos, a testament to various interests and passions, and a field of clues about the adult they were starting to be and would eventually fully become—except Lauren never got to fully become.
Grant wanted to close his eyes against the assault of images.
Though he hadn’t known Lauren, the details were excruciating because they suggested so much .
. . life. The duvet on the bed was thrown back like Lauren had hopped out of it a moment ago.
A nightie lay in a puddle on a poppy-printed area rug as if just shrugged off.
A large desk was cluttered with makeup and books—even library books—and a big powerful iMac.
A huge corkboard lay propped against one wall, though it probably would’ve been hung on the wall in Lauren’s actual room.
It was packed with sketches—good ones—of various design ideas.
There was even a small wastebasket—trash still in it.
Grant did close his eyes for a second then.
When he opened them, Madeline was watching him, hands on her hips, mouth set, eyes . . . wary or wounded or both.
“Well?” she said defiantly as if expecting criticism or something.
He rubbed his jaw with one hand, considering the three storage rooms, considering her. “Where would you like to start?” he asked finally, “and what do you want me to do?”
It turned out that Madeline knew precisely where she wanted to start. She had an action plan. It shouldn’t have surprised him.
“I guess that’s what happens when you do nothing but obsess over something in the back of your mind for three years,” she said wryly at one point. “You come up with a plan without even knowing it.”
“Um, no, actually. I don’t think that’s how most of our minds work when we’re obsessing. You’re special.”
“Oh, yes, very,” she said, not getting that he meant it sincerely.
“Anyway,” she swallowed hard, “first things first. I need you to get rid of those for me.” She pointed at Lauren’s garbage can and the nightgown.
He did, quickly throwing both items into a big bin at the end of the row of storage containers. When he returned, Madeline was pulling boxes and a garment bag out of the back of the trailer. He helped her.
“I already know everything I want in each container, so it will just be a matter of locating those items and packing them or breaking them down to load.”
“You don’t want . . . all of it?”
“No,” Madeline said firmly. “And I have Haul-it coming at 3:30 to take everything I don’t want.” She checked her watch. “We’d better move.”
“Haul-it?”
She gave him a sympathetic smile. “Oh, yes . . . This will make you jealous. Haul-it is a company that will come and take everything we leave for a very reasonable fee. Garbage will go to garbage. Anything recyclable will go to the appropriate recycling center, and any remotely salable items will go to a thrift store chain they have an agreement with. Greenridge, like most small towns, doesn’t have anything similar. ”
“You’re right. That does make me jealous.”
Madeline laughed—and that was their last light moment for a while.
The work went quickly but was understandably difficult.
Madeline was quiet and focused, working with intent and giving him one-line directions like, “We’ll take all the legs off the tables, then lean them against the wall of the trailer,” or “Put a blanket between those to protect the surfaces,” or “Let’s stand the couches on end. They’ll take less room that way.”
Every so often, folding this or boxing up that—an object would hit Madeline extra hard, and she would freeze, sometimes for long minutes at a stretch, and stare far, far away.
At first, Grant was at a loss. Uncomfortable, his impulse was to fill the quiet—but he didn’t.
One time though, when she paused for more than a couple minutes over a set of toy plastic dishes that were somewhat incongruously in the drawer of a big office desk, he stopped what he was doing and went over and took her hand.
She startled, looked down at her hand in his, then pressed her forehead into his shoulder for a moment.
At 2:35, Madeline stopped abruptly. Lauren’s room, as Grant had come to think of the third storage locker, was completely cleared out, without even a scrap of paper left on the floor.
The other two had been thoroughly gone through but still had some furniture, assorted odds and ends, and a lot of clothing and kitchen stuff lying everywhere.
“That’s it,” she said, wiping her hands on the thighs of her jeans. “Done with time to spare.”
“Are you sure you don’t want to box the rest? Maybe you could sell—”
“No, I couldn’t. I wouldn’t. It stays. I have what I’m keeping and the stuff I can part with via my store. The rest—” Madeline broke off, shaking her head.
She cleared up her final bill at the main office, ended her lease, and let them know that Haul-it was coming. That was that. Grant felt . . . undone by the whole experience. He could only imagine how Madeline was feeling.
“I don’t want to go to the cemetery,” Madeline said as they headed toward it, their last planned stop before hitting the road for home.
“Oh . . .” At a loss for words yet again, Grant hated how he was failing to be the help and support he longed to be for her. He just had no clue what “help and support” looked like when someone had been through all that Madeline had.