Yours to Keep by Serena Bell

suggested, was neatly trimmed around his ear. She had the urge to trace a finger across his skin from his jaw to behind the sensitive curve of that ear and down the nape of his neck.
    “I know exactly what you mean,” he said quietly. “When my wife—her name was Trish—died, there were three categories of people. There were people who didn’t ask me anything about how I felt, because they were scared of hearing the answer. And there were people who asked me how I felt because they felt they should ask, or because they wanted to be able to report to other people about the condition of the bereaved widower. Then there were the people who asked because they really, truly wanted to know. I didn’t mind talking to them, but the other two sets of people filled me with rage, really boundless rage.”
    “Yeah.” Her heart was choked with emotion, and she couldn’t say more.
    He seemed to understand, though. “That’s why I said I was sorry about Theo’s questions. He sort of forced you to tell us about your mom.”
    “But I didn’t mind. Because he really wanted to know.”
    “Your experience must have been a lot like Theo’s. You were both so young.”
    “I understood enough to know she wasn’t coming back, but not enough to have any perspective on how I would ever, ever be able to deal with it.” She was shocked, for the millionth time, by how much she still felt like that motherless child when she thought of those days.
    And—she didn’t say it aloud—when she had surfaced from the worst of the initial pain there was the misery of discovering how screwed up their immigration situation was. This country, which had promised to be hers, slipping away quickly and irretrievably.
    “I think even when you’re older you feel—I felt, at least—like you can’t imagine ever being happy again,” he said. “And it does take awhile, and it has a way of creeping in when you’re not planning it and least expect it. Surprising you. I still feel surprised sometimes when I feel outright happy.” He turned slightly, then, to look at her, and there was a question in his eyes that felt, to her, like an answer.
    Happiness surprised her then, big and bright and almost like the thickness of tears in her chest.
    They were in Hawthorne now, and Ana was aware of the bleakness of the landscape in a way she never had been before. She rarely thought much about the city’s history, about how vibrant it must have been as a mill city, and how desolate it was now—boarded-up factories, some of which had briefly been turned into office buildings or apartment complexes during the nineties boom, only to fall back into disuse. They were on St. Avignon Boulevard now, coming into the center of the city, and it was distressing to see through his eyes how many broken windows there were, how many vacant lots, how many places where trees had grown up to reclaim the city. It was so, so different from Beacon.
    “Ana.” His tone was serious.
    Oh, she wanted this, and she didn’t! How was it possible to crave and dread exactly the same thing?
    He took a long breath; she heard and felt it. “Ana, I—”
    “Left here,” she interrupted as they came to the light, and she felt a twist of panic. They were close to her neighborhood now; he was going to see for himself where she lived, how she lived. “You’re going to go right in three blocks.”
    She’d stopped him, somehow. Whatever he’d been about to say, he’d thought better of it, or the necessity of navigating in the city had made it too difficult. He took the right onto Salem then made a series of quick turns.
    They went by her street, but she didn’t point it out, didn’t say, “My building is down there.” She directed him down streets narrow enough that he had to give his full concentration to maneuvering around parked cars and not hitting pedestrians in the growing dusk. She gothim to Duarte Elementary, to the circle in front of the cafeteria entrance. He pulled up at the