Where We Used to Roam Jenn Bishop (red white royal blue TXT) 📖

practice, on the football field. He knows how to put in the work.

He’s going to beat this. I know it. He’s got only two more weeks there, and then he’ll come home. He’s going to show everyone—Mom, Dad, and everyone else—that he’s back to normal.

I’m never touching that stuff again, I swear.

It’s a promise. And I believe him.

Late Sunday morning, I’m on the front porch reading my buffalo book when an unfamiliar beige sedan pulls into our driveway and out comes Tyler, making a beeline for me.

“What are you doing here?” I ask. “You know it’s Sunday, right?”

“You said you wanted to know when there’s a yard sale, and Grams’s church is having a big one today and I didn’t know until we went to church and saw it and I don’t have your cell number so I thought—”

“Oh my gosh, Tyler. It’s okay.” I laugh. “I’m just surprised, is all. Does this mean I get to finally meet your Grams?”

Tyler nods, and I head inside to let Delia know where I’m going. I don’t know why it makes me nervous a little, the idea of meeting Tyler’s grandmother. Maybe it’s that I still don’t know more about Tyler’s mom. Two weeks of hanging out every weekday and it’s the one subject he doesn’t talk about.

I get it, though. I’ve been open with him about my family and Austin but real quiet about Becca and Kennedy.

Tyler opens the car door for me, all gentlemanlike, which makes me giggle, and then I slide in. The car smells like vanilla. His grandmother’s hair is shoulder-length and gray, and she reaches a hand back for me to squeeze. She’s younger than I imagined, definitely younger than my grandparents. “So nice to finally meet you, Emma. Tyler’s been running my ear off about you these past couple weeks.”

“It’s nice to meet you, too.”

“Tyler tells me you’re from Massachusetts, huh? I’ve never been out east myself, but I hear it’s lovely.”

“Her town’s like Stars Hollow,” Tyler says.

“Thank goodness he’s got someone else to watch that darn show with.” His grandmother laughs, tapping on the steering wheel for emphasis. “Those Gilmores talk too fast. I couldn’t stand one more minute of them.”

Tyler rolls his eyes, snickering a little. “Grams has a few opinions.”

“A few, eh? Well, I’m just glad Tyler’s found himself a friend for the summer. Lord knows it hasn’t been an easy year for him. He’s a good kid, though, and he deserves it. It’s just too bad you’re not sticking around longer.”

“I’ll be here through most of August,” I say. “We’ve still got a lot of time.”

“I know, I know.”

“Maybe sometime Tyler can come out and visit me.”

“Fly? All the way out to Massachusetts?” Grams flips her sunglasses up and eyes me in the rearview mirror.

“Maybe next summer. Or at Christmas? We’re stuck in Boston for the holidays anyway because of my mom’s store. Might as well make the most of it.”

“Well, I don’t know about that,” Grams says. Something changes in her voice, and I can’t figure out why. Does she not want Tyler to travel for some reason? Can’t she see that he’s just itching to get out of this town?

I glance over at Tyler, but he’s just looking down at his lap. I’ve clearly overstepped some kind of boundary.

Thankfully, up ahead I can see the massive yard sale in the parking lot of the Presbyterian church. Table after table covered in all kinds of stuff, blankets spread out on the grass. But that I’m in heaven feeling that usually comes over me when I get to shop for shadow boxes is tamped down by the mood in the car.

Grams heads for one of her friends running the refreshments booth while Tyler and I start wandering the sale. Once she’s out of earshot, I ask him, “Everything all right?”

“Yeah,” Tyler says. But it’s not the 150 percent enthusiastic “yeah” I’m used to getting.

I know I said I wouldn’t pry, but I don’t think this is about his mom, so I figure it’s okay to give it a shot. “It’s just, a minute ago, in the car with your Grams, it felt like—”

“She can’t afford to fly me to Massachusetts, Em. But she’s too proud to say it.”

My face goes hot, and I feel like an idiot. “I’m sure my parents could pay. My parents always have frequent-flier miles they don’t use and—”

“Em, stop. I’m not some charity case, all right? Look, I don’t want to talk about it anymore.”

“Okay,” I say. It’s the first moment we’ve had like this in two weeks, and I hate how it leaves me with this squirminess in my stomach. I didn’t mean to hurt his feelings, but somehow I did.

I decide it’s better to stay quiet than to try to say something to make things better only to have it backfire. I flip through some books, looking for any by Becca’s favorite authors. The other day I thought maybe I could cut out pages from her favorite books and black out most of the words to make a poem, like we did back in fifth grade, but then I remembered the “book murderer” incident.

Book dismembering is probably at least as bad in Becca’s mind, so scratch that.

I’m detangling a necklace that’s gotten stuck in an old brooch when I hear Tyler excitedly calling out my name.

I hurry over to meet him at the next table. It was probably a jewelry box once, its cover made of beveled glass. Teeny-tiny squares and diamonds, angled in just right. It’s beautiful: the kind of thing you inherit, not what you put out at a yard sale.

I flip it over and find a tag saying it’s only five dollars.

“It’s perfect,” I whisper, fumbling in my pocket for some cash.

“Sorry about a minute ago,” Tyler says. “I shouldn’t have gotten upset.”

“It’s okay,” I say. There’s a man working this table. When I hand him the five dollars, he offers me a plastic grocery bag and a yellow sticker to