“Ha.” She slaps a hand on the table, her wedding ring—which she has never taken off—clinking on the wood. “You wanted me to give you permission and tell you it was a good idea to pursue him.”

“Well, duh.”

Her eyes narrow, but she can’t hide her smile. “When things come easily, we don’t fully appreciate them.” She stands and smooths her skirt. “I may not have a clear solution, but I can offer you a grilled cheese sandwich.”

“God, yes,” I groan. But then I think about how of all the dishes in Macon’s life he could have mentioned when I asked him for a good food memory, he picked grilled cheese. Were we really his best memories?

A leaden ball falls in my belly, and I suddenly don’t want grilled cheese. But it’s too late. My mother gives me a pleased nod and heads to the fridge.

Despite myself, the scents of frying bread and butter whet my appetite. I eat my sandwich slowly, my eyes closing with each bite because there is nothing else like her grilled cheese to bring me back to being a young girl, her whole life ahead of her. I hated being a teenager. I was filled with impatience to get on with the adventure of living my own life on my terms. How little I knew then. A fierce longing for those awkward yet wonderfully ignorant days nearly overwhelms me now. I’d go back there if I could.

And yet a persistent voice whispers in my head, exposing the lie for what it is. Because I want something else much more.

Part of me wants to stay in my mother’s kitchen forever, that simple place with its florid fruit wallpaper and yellow cabinets. But when night falls, I return to the perfection of Macon’s house and find the place oddly quiet.

Come morning, I’m sitting at the kitchen table, running over menu ideas in an effort to do something productive. I didn’t sleep well last night. Macon has kept his distance, texting to say he needs some time to think as well. And though it’s my own damn fault for opening my mouth, I feel the loss of his open affection keenly. Why did I have to say anything?

Yes, I have emotional scars. Everyone does. The point is you don’t run from them; you work through them. I could be that scared, reactionary, closed-off girl of my childhood, or I could grow up and take at face value what Macon clearly wants to give me.

I’m about to get my ass up and go search for him when he appears. Dressed in a rumpled, faded gray T-shirt and a loose pair of athletic shorts that hang low on his hips, it’s as though he just rolled out of bed. He runs a hand over his spiky hair and peers at me with eyes that are bruised and puffy.

Regret pushes through my middle, a thick ugly knot that has me pressing a hand to my stomach. I’m the one who put those lines of strain at the corners of his mouth. It’s because of me that his shoulders, usually straight and proud, now hang low.

“Hey.” His voice crackles in the silence.

I clear the lump in my throat. “Hey.”

Macon makes a noise in the back of his throat as he slowly approaches. He’s holding a slim package in his hand, about the size of a paperback novel. The brown packing paper is wrinkled and battered as though it’s endured a particularly rough time with the postal delivery.

Watching me with wary eyes, he takes a seat. Thick thighs parted, elbows on his knees, Macon studies the box he holds loosely in his big hands. His thumb presses into a corner of it as he begins to speak in a voice like sandpaper. “I know you didn’t want this before—”

“Wait.” I put a hand to his wrist. “Hold on. What do you mean, before? What is that?”

He frowns. “You’ve never seen it?”

After a moment, he offers me the box. And I accept it with all the hesitation of a person accepting a bomb.

My name and childhood address are on the front, and Macon’s old address is on the top left corner. A big red Return to Sender stamp covers the label. On the top right corner, those same words are repeated, written in familiar handwriting, only I can’t tell if it belongs to Mama or to Sam; their script is too similar.

I lick my suddenly dry lips. “I’ve never seen this.”

His frown grows. “You didn’t return it?”

“That’s . . .” My voice breaks, and I try again. “That’s my mother’s handwriting. Or Sam’s. I can’t be certain which one.”

His lips pinch, and I know he’s thinking this is yet another instance where Sam might have messed with us. “Well . . .” He gestures to the package with a lift of his chin. “It’s for you.”