Reminders of Him

by Colleen Hoover

“How’s the house coming along?” Patrick asks. “Fine. I think I’m just a few months out from having it move-in ready.” “When are you putting your current house up for sale?” The thought of that makes me sink an inch deeper into my seat. Putting it up for sale will feel like selling off a piece of myself, for so many reasons. “I don’t know yet.” “I don’t want you to move,” Diem says. Those six words hit me right in the heart. “But you’ll get to go stay with him at his new house,” Grace says, attempting to reassure her. “He won’t be far.” “I like the house he has now,” Diem says with a pout. “I can walk there all by myself.” Diem is staring at her hands. I want to reach over and pull her out of Grace’s lap and hug her and tell her I’ll never leave her, but it would be a lie. I wish I would have waited just six months before deciding to build that house back when Diem was younger. Six months would have been plenty of time to know that the little girl Grace and Patrick were raising would infiltrate my life and my heart as if I made her myself. “Diem will be fine,” Grace reassures me. She must be deciphering the look on my face right now. “It’s twenty minutes. Hardly anything will change.” I stare at Diem, and she looks up at me, and I swear I can see tears in her eyes. But she closes them and curls into Grace before I can be sure.