Page 89 of York

But I nodded anyway.

I hadn’t expected to feel so nostalgic, being back.

As I walked through the familiar house—and its new additions—I was overwhelmed with the onslaught of memories and the emotions tied to them.

Christmas mornings with the warm twinkle lights and multicolored presents under the tree.

Then three days later, getting dragged away from that tree to get whipped for breaking my new bike by riding it down a hill he’d warned me not to go down.

The scarred dining table where I’d enjoyed many lovely Thanksgiving dinners. But also where I’d been slapped hard for back-talking my grandfather about my curfew.

Touring all the old spaces was the epitome of bittersweet. And I couldn’t help but let myself wonder what (if anything) might have been different if I returned as an adult. Would he have been kinder? With the way Greg said he gushed about Denali, would he have treated her with the gentleness all kids deserve?

I made my way up the back steps and down the hall to my own bedroom.

It was a time capsule.

All my old posters were on the wall. My couple of stuffed animals from my childhood were on the bed. My clothes were in the closets.

I took my time in there, letting the memories surface, feeling them, then releasing.

It was as I was exiting that I saw the door across the hall ajar.

It’d always been a guest room.

But the bright pink color had my curiosity piqued.

Moving across, I pushed the door open… and walked into a little girl’s bedroom.

It was bubblegum sweet with the pink walls, the white curtains with little pink and yellow flowers, the pink and yellow bedspread on the four-poster bed.

There was a small white table with a pile of coloring books, crayons, and markers. Near that was a bookshelf with books. A toy chest was closed and I imagined there would be toys to be found in there.

On the wall over the bed were big white letters.

D-E-N-A-L-I.

Tears pricked my eyes as I walked over toward the bed.

I reached for the framed picture on the nightstand to find me looking down at myself. I was sitting on a park bench at a park near my apartment in Philly, holding a blanket-wrapped newborn Denali.

Tears pricked my eyes.

And it was just a moment before they were pouring.

That was where York found me sometime later, coming in and crouching before me.

Reaching out, he grabbed my legs and squeezed.

“This was sweet.”

“Yeah,” I said between cries.

“She will love this.”

I nodded, pressing my heels to my eyes to try to stop the flow.

“It’s okay to grieve, babe. Your loss. Denali’s loss. Your conflicted feelings about it all.”