“Oh my God.”
“Claire, please.”
“You renovated your house for us?”
“I never expected you to move in.”
“You built Lily a bedroom!”
“I know.”
“You didn’t think that was something I deserved to know?”
“I didn’t plan it like that.”
“Then how exactly does someone accidentally build a bedroom for another person’s child?”
Ryan stood.
“It started with the bathroom.”
I stared at him.
“What?”
“The pipes upstairs needed replacing. Then the contractor asked what I wanted to do with the extra rooms.”
“And you said, what? ‘Build one for my dead best friend’s daughter’?”
He flinched.
“I deserve that.”
“Yes, you do.”
Ryan looked down.
“At first, everything after Ethan died was about him.”
“What do you mean?”
“The groceries. Fixing things. Helping with Lily.”
He paused.
“I kept hearing his voice.”
My throat tightened.
“Before he died, he made me promise you two wouldn’t be alone.”
I hadn’t known that.
“He said that?”
Ryan nodded.
“He told me you’d pretend you could handle everything. He told me Lily would need people who remembered him.”
Tears burned behind my eyes.
“So I helped,” Ryan continued. “And I told myself it was for Ethan.”
