“I’ve already been.”
And he was back so soon? Everything about the night was confusing her. The way she felt. What she wanted. What he wanted.
He pulled a smallish box off the top of the pile in the bag and handed it to her. “This is from my sister Belle. She’s the youngest. She’s twenty-three.”
She didn’t take the box. “Don’t you want to put that under the tree? Stella’s gifts are all under there.”
“It’s for you.” He laid it on her lap.
She stared at him, his face shadowed in the soft glow from the Christmas tree. She’d have turned on more lights, but didn’t want him seeing her so well in case she started to cry again.
“Your family knows about me?”
“That was my reason for going back. To tell them all about you and Stella. To let them know that while I am and will always be a Fortune, you and Stella come first.”
Had he lost his mind? Or was she losing hers?
“Open it,” he said, leaning forward with his forearms resting on his knees as he waited.
Mostly because she had no idea what to do, had nothing coherent to say, Lizzie opened the pretty red-and-gold holiday paper to reveal a white generic gift box.
Pulling the lid off slowly, afraid to look inside, she saw only a photo inside. An old one. Taken from a camera and developed rather than printed. It was of a little boy—four, maybe—dressed in gray pants, a white shirt, a gray jacket, red tie and shiny black shoes. He was holding a little plastic Flutophone.
“He’s absolutely adorable,” she said. “But who is he?”
She glanced over at Nolan.
“That’s me. I’d just won my first talent show playing ‘Jingle Bells’ on a toy my brother Beau got for Christmas. I was three.”
Emotion welled in her again. All day long it had been happening. She’d think she was pregnant, except she’d slept with no one since Nolan last year. “I love it,” she said, though she had no idea why Nolan’s little sister would want her to have it. “Tell her thank you.”
He handed her a second box. “That’s from Savannah. She’s a year younger than I am and probably the sibling I’m closest to. She’s small, but as strong and determined as they come.”
Slowly opening the paper—white with Santas all over it, this time—trying to untape rather than rip, she found another generic white box, this one flat and a little bigger.
Inside was a small model plane with a broken wing. The painted detail on the thing was impressive, but...a broken toy? She glanced up at him.
“I made that when I was ten. Took me over a week after school and on weekends. Savannah broke it ten minutes after I finished. I’d forgotten all about it, but she kept it all these years. Says it’s a reminder to her that it’s better to control your anger than unleash it and lash out. Which was what she’d been doing when she broke it.” He coughed. “She, uh, told me to tell you that the reason she learned that was because while I, um, cried when it happened, I just calmly picked up the pieces and walked away. She’d been wanting a fight and I didn’t
give it to her.”
“Why was she so mad at you?”
“I’d read her diary and told one of our brothers that she had a crush on one of his friends.”
Oh, my. Hands trembling, she put the plane carefully back in the box. “Please tell her I said thank you.” She decided to give the plane back to her. Lizzie wasn’t taking anyone’s prized possessions.
“This one’s from Georgia. She’s older than me by two years. And beautiful, but kind of bossy if you ask me.”
Inside that box was a drawing he’d made when he was three. The only thing legible was an X and what looked like an O. She’d told him that was how you spelled I love you, Nolan explained.
There were boxes from his brothers, too. Beau, who was thirty, Draper, thirty-one, and Austin, who Lizzie had already heard about and was the oldest at thirty-three. One held a can of peas, along with the message that Nolan hated peas so much he’d once left the dinner table and spit them out in his dresser drawer, where they stayed until long after they’d dried up. Another was a rolled-up scroll that turned out to be the first song Nolan had ever written. And the last, which maybe was the oddest of all. A pair of old cotton pants. It was from Austin.
“What’s this?” she asked.
“The pants I wear around the house the most at home. Mom has nagged me to get rid of them, but I don’t. They’re comfortable and I like them.”
Overwhelmed, she looked at the open boxes on the couch and table around her. It was so sweet, but what was she supposed to do with all of this stuff?