Firestone by Claudia Hall Christian Page A

Charlie started. “Were you going to
go through the room today? We could help. We’ve
done . . .”
    “ We? What?” Sandy
asked.
    She opened the door and flicked on the
overhead light. Someone had meticulously organized everything in
the room. All the clothing was hung on racks at the end of the
room. Large photo albums took up the floor under the clothing. Like
items were sorted together, and filing cabinets lined one end of
the room. Books sat on new bookshelves along the middle of the
room. Violins and music gear lay in a corner. There was only one
stack of old boxes in the far back corner of the room.
    Sandy’s mouth fell open.
    “ W . . .what?” Sandy asked.
    Charlie grinned.
    “ Wait ’til Val finds out I
was here when you saw it first. She’s going
to . . .”
    “ Charlie!” Valerie yelled
from the end of the hall. “You promised!”
    “ I didn’t do anything!”
Charlie said. “She was already here.”
    Valerie sprinted in their direction. Knowing
something good was happening, Keenan and Ivy peeked down the
hall.
    “ I wanted
to . . .” Sandy nodded as if they could understand
what she had wanted. “And . . .”
    Valerie gave Sandy one of her brilliant
smiles.
    “ How . . .?” Sandy asked.
    “ I knew you were having a
tough time with this,” Valerie said. “And who wouldn’t? I haven’t
had a lot to do since I’m really just hanging around for the
twins.”
    “ We helped!” Charlie said.
“All of us — Sissy, Noelle . . . Tink
too.”
    “ I helped!” Ivy trotted
down the hallway toward them.
    “ Right! Ivy helped when
she was here,” Charlie said. “Nash and Teddy built the racks in the
back. I mean, Jake told them what to do and how to build the
bookshelves, but we helped. That guy Tim . . . you
know, the one who’s hot for Sissy? He did a lot of the cleaning and
carting stuff to the dumpsters. He said it was
therapeutic.”
    “ I just rounded up the
troops,” Valerie said. “Kept them moving.”
    “ She was really great,”
Charlie said. “She helped us think about what we would value, and
made us care. It was fun.”
    Charlie nodded, and Valerie blushed.
    “ We threw out a lot of
stuff,” Delphie said. She had herded Keenan down the hallway and
into the conversation. “Shoes, things we determined weren’t worth
saving.”
    “ Is that okay?” Valerie
asked.
    “ Absolutely,” Sandy said.
“I would have never been able to make those decisions. Ever. I
just . . .”
    “ I loved doing it,” Valerie said. “I
love going through other people’s stuff when I have no real
connection to them. They’re like characters I’d play in a movie. I
get to see the inside of their life. It’s fun.”
    “ I don’t think I could
have done this myself,” Sandy said.
    “ We left a few boxes,”
Valerie said. “I thought you’d want to go through those boxes
yourself.”
    “ Why?” Sandy
asked.
    “ They’re filled with your
baby stuff,” Charlie said. “A lock of hair, baby
book . . .”
    “ Booties,” Ivy
said.
    “ If you’d like help, we
can help,” Valerie said. “But I figured you’d want to go through it
on your own.”
    Not sure what to say, Sandy smiled and
nodded.
    “ Seth’s in town,” Delphie
said. “Why don’t you call him? He can come over and help with the
photos.”
    “ But
Ava . . .” Sandy started.
    “ Ava won’t care,” Delphie
said. “She’s not that kind of a woman.”
    “ He looks so sad when
I . . .” Sandy started.
    “ Sadder than you look
now?” Charlie asked.
    Sandy shook her head.
    “ He is your father,”
Delphie sniffed. “It would be nice if he acted like it every once
and a while. In fact . . .”
    Delphie spun in place. They soon heard her
calling Seth from the landline in the living room.
    “ Andy,” Keenan said. He
looked at Sandy. “Your mother.”
    Sandy nodded.
    “ Would you mind if I told
you something?” Keenan asked. “Is that too weird?”
    “ Thank you for