Page 290 of Ashes of Sin and Stardust

“Unfortunately.”

“Your mom is really short.”

“Not as short as you.” My dad had been a head shorter than me, and my mom was only a little over five feet. Neither of my parents were sure where my insane height had come from.

“How tall are you, anyway?”

“Six foot nine.”

She wrinkled her nose. “No you’re not. Jake is six foot six. And you’rewaytaller than him.”

“How do you know Jake is six foot six?”

“I read Alex’s file.”

“Well, last time I checked, I was six foot nine.”

“When was that?”

“When I got my license, I guess.”

She nodded as if that explained everything. “Guys keep growing longer than girls do. You’re taller than six foot nine. You have to be.”

I didn’t argue. Once you got past six foot nine, it didn’t matter. You were just freakishly tall.

More photos, more memories. There was one of Matt and Jake sitting at the bar as kids, having milkshakes and eating burgers for their birthday dinner. There was one with me and Mark Baker on a camping trip where I was showing him how to start a fire. There were a few of me at the bar, wiping the wood down between customers. I hadn’t even known some of these photos existed. Mom must have taken some of them while I wasn’t paying attention.

Alice set the scrapbook back under the coffee table and picked up another shoebox of photos, searching through them. She made a face at one of the photos and showed it to me. “Is that...”

I felt my eyebrows lift in surprise. I hadn’t seen that face in a very long time. “Wow. I didn’t even know she got that photo. That’s Savannah.”

Alice and I stared at the photo. The photo had been taken through my bedroom window. Savannah was sitting on the swing I’d made her, her long blonde ringlets flowing behind her. I was leaning against the tree I’d hung it from, one leg crossed over the other, my thumbs in my jean pockets, glaring at her.

“You look pissed.”

“I probably was. She was annoying as hell.”

“I thought you liked her.”

“I did. But it took me a while to realize it.”

“Have you ever looked her up?”

“No.”

“Do you have any photos of Robin?”

I didn’t answer right away, thinking of the shoebox in the closet in my bedroom. Alice put the photo of Savannah back in the box and put the lid back on, looking up at me.

“Why?”

She shrugged. “There are a lot of things I don’t want to think about right now.”

As much as I didn’t want to go through the photos of Robin, I also wanted to keep Alice from going on a self-destructive rampage, and I was trying to get her to open up to me emotionally. The best way to do that was to be open with her. I stood and fetched the box from my closet, handing it to her tentatively.

Alice went through each photo, staring at it, asking questions about where we were and what we were doing. There were several of Megan and Robin together. Robin was taller than Megan by quite a bit, but it was perfectly clear who was the younger of the two.

“Do you miss her?” Alice asked quietly.

---