Noah tries to turn on the lights but quickly realizes there’s no electricity and I wonder just how long it’s been turned off for. The further I get around the home, I try to picture my mom living here. She would have walked these very floors, making herself dinner and cooking for Rivers. I wonder if they had a good life before all that shit went down. Who knows? Maybe she was even a good mother to him at one point.
I shake the thought from my head and focus on what’s in front of me. There’s a coffee mug in the kitchen sink, a bar of soap in the shower, and a basket of laundry sitting on top of the washing machine– all signs that someone has been living here recently.
I make my way down the hallway with Tully right behind me and stop to look at her when I get to a closed door that’s clearly a bedroom. “Are you ready for this?”
She shrugs her shoulders. “It’s either now or never, right?”
“Right.” I push my way into the room and look around in wonder. It’s not at all what I expected. It’s a tidy room that was clearly put together for a little boy and while the rest of the house is completely bare, this room is filled with belongings.
The closet is complete with all of Rivers’ clothes, the bed has been made with military perfection, there’s a desk with school books, and even an old worn out couch in the corner, but what gets me the most is the picture that sits in a silver photo frame on the bedside table of Tully and Rivers smiling towards the camera, telling me exactly what I need to know- Rivers has been living here all alone with no furniture in the house, no electricity, and no groceries packed high in the shelf.
What kind of life have we been allowing him to live?
Tully walks over to the photo frame and scoops it up before running her thumb over the picture of Rivers. “We failed him,” she murmurs. “We should have known about this and done something to fix it. Who knows how long he’s been living like this?”
I nod, unable to get any words out when I get the sense that she needs to be alone. “I’ll just be out there,” I tell her, pointing back towards the door.
Tully nods and as I close the door behind me, I get a glimpse of her sitting down on his bed, the tears once again completely taking over as she continues scanning his room, searching for anything to help her feel closer to the one person she can’t have.
I walk out to find Noah sitting up on the kitchen counter. “Is she alright?” he questions, nodding down the hallway towards Rivers’ bedroom.
“I don’t know. I think she’s more hurt than anything. Wondering why he felt he couldn’t talk to her about this.”
He nods before looking around the empty kitchen, taking in the blank, lifeless walls and water stains on the ceiling. “It couldn’t have been easy living like this.”
“Nope,” I say. “No wonder he spent so many nights at your place even if it was on the couch.”
“It all makes sense now.”
Rivers bedroom door is ripped open before Tully comes tearing down with something in her hand. “Look at this,” she says with a slight roar, making my brows pull down in concern.
Noah hops down from the counter and takes the slip of paper from Tully’s hand which is when I realize it’s actually a photo, only it’s not framed special like the one of the two of them. This photo looks old and has torn edges and coffee rings from being used as a coaster.
Noah’s brows dip down as he studies the picture. It’s clearly Rivers from a few years ago but his arm is thrown over the shoulder of a girl. “Is that…?”
“Yeah, Lacey,” Tully says.
“Wait. Lacey? As in Lily’s best friend Lacey?”
“Yep,” Tully snaps as accusations begin clouding her mind. “How the hell does Rivers know Lacey and why didn’t he tell us about her?”
I shake my head, unable to piece the puzzle together. There’s literally no connection between the two of them. This doesn’t make any sense.
Tully starts pacing as the tears from earlier continue to fill her eyes. “Hey,” Noah says, grabbing hold of his sister and pulling her into his chest. “We’ll figure it out. I have Lacey’s number somewhere at home. It’s as simple as giving her a call and figuring it out. It’ll be fine. It’s probably nothing.”
“You don’t keep a picture of a girl if it’s probably nothing,” she snaps back at him.
“Chill,” he tells her. “This picture is years old. He’s just a kid here. I’m sure if she was someone important to him, he would have told us about her.”