“Here’s how we’re going to do it,” Whitman said, sensing that Travis needed him to take charge.

He walked Travis over to his couch and placed stickers, markers and boxes in front of him and Mr. Wigglesworth, obviously helping by scratching at the boxes and running away with the markers to bury under his dog bed blankets like a bone. He had snooped around a bit and declared the dining table to be yard sale central. Caitlyn had gone over to their aunt’s, and the two of them were going into Copper Beach to see a movie together. Travis had told Whitman when asking for his help that he didn’t want Caitlyn to have to see it all happening before her eyes.

Whitman understood and decided to run point. He was going directly into the minefield, but he was the only one who could and still come out unscathed.

“I shouldn’t be such a baby,” Travis said, petting Mr. Wigglesworth. “I should be able to do this myself.”

“No,” Whitman said, sitting next to him and laying a hand on his shoulder. “You really shouldn’t.”

Travis’s eyes held gratitude and something undefinable that had Whitman springing back to his feet and away from danger.

Whitman ran back and forth, bringing out stacks of items for Travis to sort through, and then handling the trash himself when things got backed up because Travis got hung up on something or other, holding it close and staring off into the distance, not really seeing anything.

“That’s an interesting shirt,” Whitman said, catching Travis clinging to a blinding Hawaiian print shirt with sewn-on fabric lei. Mr. Wigglesworth had gotten tired of the action and curled up in his doggy bed by the TV. He raised his head when Whitman spoke, and appeared to have some interest in the strange creation in Travis’s hand, but not enough to counteract the exhaustion from his intense doggy day.

Travis finally seemed to see what was in his hands and laughed. “Mom loved collecting weird cookbooks and then doing theme dinners. She’d scrounge around thrift stores and find the strangest cookbooks and then not only fix an entire meal from them but make us dress up to match. Like she found an old British war cookbook, that replaced things that were hard to find back then like milk and butter and eggs with weird stuff. Cakes made from potatoes, and meat that was really mashed and baked lentils. I had to wear tweed pants and slick back my hair, and Caitlyn curled her hair and wore an old looking dress. This was obviously from her Hawaiian party cookbook.”

“Oh my God, that sounds amazing.” Whitman said, sitting down next to Travis and laying a hand on his thigh, danger be damned. “Please tell me you have pictures.”

“No, not many. She tended to get so wrapped up in the doing, she’d forget. But yeah, she was pretty awesome.”

“Do you still have the cookbooks?”

“I still have everything. This is the first time I’ve touched any of it.”

“Well, do not give away the cookbooks, at least. Then you’ll still have a piece of those moments to keep with you.”

“You’re just saying that because you’re a librarian and you can’t imagine giving away a book.” Travis locked eyes with Whitman, and Whitman wondered if his every thought and feeling was on display.

“This is also true,” he said, and quickly stood under the pretense of returning for more items. Really, he just needed to catch his breath. Even under a sea of misery and sorrow, Travis was breathtaking. “Back to work.”

Whitman continued to bring out items and engaged Travis as much as he could. He knew that although it was tough, that reminiscing like that was also cathartic. Travis spent most of his moments zoned out, but sometimes, Whitman was able to break through and tear a smile or two from behind the cracks of Travis’s broken heart.

He was through the clothing and into the boxes of old belongings stuffed into the back of her closet. A few more hours and he might have the whole room cleaned out. He carried out the final two boxes. One was a pretty hat box that contained notes and letters and cards that held sentimental value. The other was an old moving box filled with yearbooks and notebooks, probably left-over items from school that Travis’s mom couldn’t bear to part with when she was Caitlyn’s age.

“You’ll probably want to take these to your room and go over them in detail later on. Should I just stick them there for you?” Whitman asked, still holding them and peering over the top. They were dusty and he had to bury his nose into his shoulder to smother a sneeze, and it jostled the boxes enough to send the hat box toppling to the ground. Colorful paper scattered everywhere.

“I’m so sorry,” Whitman said, still sniffling into his sleeve, although more so out of embarrassment this time.

Whitman couldn’t help but notice what the papers were as they collected them and returned them to the box. Most of them had probably been hand-made by Travis or Caitlyn, and he collected them with one hand while keeping Mr. Wigglesworth, who darted over to investigate on the chance that whatever fell was edible, back with the other.

Travis looked at the papers like they were foreign. “I didn’t know she kept all this stuff.”

“It looks like she was a pretty great mom,” he said, hoping he hadn’t overstepped, but though Travis’s eyes appeared a little mistier than they had a few seconds before, he still gave Whitman a heart-stopping smile.

“The absolute best.”

Travis was too young to remember Caitlyn’s father. His own had been in the picture for a couple of years, but they had never married, and he had a wandering spirit, his mom had said. He often wondered if he got his desire to leave Slat Creek from his genetics and not because of the town itself. She never seemed to sad or surprised that he had left them, although she did try her best to make up for it for Travis’s benefit.

Caitlyn was a different story. Travis couldn’t remember his mom with another man, no matter how much Caitlyn had pestered him when they were little. She had even tried to hypnotize him into remember, but to no avail, and Travis could almost laugh at the memory of her painting red polish in concentric circles on her white yo-yo and swinging it in front of Travis’s face. Their mom would never say who he was. When he was younger, Travis had believed it was because she was too hurt. As he got older, he began to fear that it was because she was too ashamed.

There had been no clues to his identity, but it didn’t keep Caitlyn from trying. Maybe if she had known, like he did, she could have moved on. He hadn’t seen his father in almost twenty years, and he didn’t remember him, but at least he had a name and a face and a story to fill in his blanks. Caitlyn had nothing.

After Whitman left and Caitlyn was holed up in her room for the evening, Travis pulled out all the papers from the hat box and began to sort them. Every card or note that might contain a clue for Caitlyn, he set aside, until he had a small stack.

Unfortunately, the most promising lead was a napkin from The Beachcomber that had a man’s first name and number on it. The Beachcomber was a bar that went out of business probably a dozen years ago. Travis only remembered because it was in Copper Beach, and the building got turned into a pancake house, which became his and Caitlyn’s favorite restaurant to go to for special occasions.

Travis didn’t remember his mom dating back then, but maybe she didn’t. He had never considered the possibility of a one-night stand when he was younger, because back then he didn’t realize such things existed, especially in conjunction with his mother. But now he wondered if maybe his mother hadn’t actually known who Caitlyn’s father was either. Maybe he was just a hookup at an old bar.

Travis opened the top drawer of his dresser and set the small stack inside, leaving the napkin on top. He would try to reverse look-up the phone number tomorrow. He was almost tempted to get a corkboard to track his progress, but that might be a bit too stalkery. Plus, he didn’t want Caitlyn to know what he was doing and get her hopes up. But maybe, if he could find her father for her, it would help repair the hole that their mother had left.

Travis would be the first to admit that Whitman and the library had done wonders for Caitlyn. She was still moody, though God knows she deserved to be. But somehow, Whitman had seemed to infuse her with a purpose, and with a confidence, or maybe it was awareness. Whatever it was, she was reading actual books, and looking around her world as if maybe she just might have a place there, instead of being so lost.

Even her therapist had commented on it at the end of their last session. Caitlyn had still stormed off, but it had been more of a rush to leave, a readiness to shrug off the weight that just being in that office held, and less of a statement of hatred for him and the therapist and everyone there. Apparently, she had opened up and talked about her time at the library, and the books that Whitman had recommended to her.

After all the memories stirred up tonight, further investigation could wait until tomorrow. Travis piled the rest of the papers that hadn’t seemingly held any clues back into the hatbox, keeping out a note that he wrote his mom on Valentine’s Day one year. It had thumbprint hearts and misspelled love and Travis raised it to his face. It smelled like old paper, just like the rest of the notes, and though he could still see an old sheen of lip gloss where he remembered his mother pressing a kiss to the homemade card like she always did, there was no residual scent of berries and vanilla that usually evoked his mother.

Travis pressed his own lips to the pink construction paper heart and placed it gently back into the box. He stored it in his own closet, making room underneath some old tennis shoes that he never wore.

Without the hat box on top, the moving box that held her old books wouldn’t stay shut. Travis decided after the day he’d had, he needed a cup of tea, so he picked up her high school year book and took it to the kitchen. The kettle whistled as Caitlyn came through the front door with a half-eaten box of Jujubes in her hand.

“Look at that hair,” she said, pointing to a girl who had bangs teased and sprayed almost straight up. “Did they not have eyes to see how ridiculous they looked?”

“Why is it the girls look younger than girls now, but the boys look older?” Travis asked.

“It’s the mustaches and the mullets.”

“Mustaches and mullets. That sounds like a really bad eighties board game.”

Caity laughed so hard she farted, setting Travis off until he had tears pouring down his face.

“Oh my God, there’s Aunt Lucinda,” Caity pointed to a small rectangle where a young girl not only had her bangs sprayed up in the air, but the sides of her hair as well.

Travis had purposely skipped the senior class pictures, at least the beginning of the alphabet, but in Lucinda’s grade they could point and stare as much as they wanted without fear of the sight of their mother sneaking up on them. They laughed and teased, praising themselves for their much superior sense of style, until Travis flipped a page and a picture of the homecoming king and queen smacked them in the face.

There, with hair that wasn’t nearly as ridiculous as many of the others but curled and flowing under a plastic crown, was their mother. She smiled up at the homecoming king, Travis’s father. The picture was in black and white, but her dress was pale and tight, with a strap on one shoulder that held a mum, complete with sparkles and whistles and three glittery words, SCH, Rachel and Jon, sticking on top of the enormous fake flower. Travis’s father was still in his football gear and was looking at Rachel like she was better than winning a stupid game or having to take stupid pictures.

Caitlyn made a wounded noise and Travis expected her to run, but she didn’t. She grabbed the book and scooted it closer to her seat. Her finger traced over every detail.

“Do you want me to make you some tea?” Travis asked, his voice coming out a little croaky, but she shook her head no.

“Do you ever think she was disappointed in us?” Caitlyn’s voice was as soft as her touch across the page.

“What? No. Of course not.”

“I mean, she was everything. And you – you’re the product of the homecoming king and queen, but you turned out to be this reclusive gay kid. We don’t know about my other half, but I can guarantee nobody’s naming me anything at school except most likely to go nuts.”

“That’s not fair. You’re having to deal with shit she never did at that age. And you know she never cared about that kind of stuff. She never did. She wanted us to be happy. I think one of the reasons she was so popular was because she didn’t care about it. She was nice to everyone. I think it would matter more to her that we take after her in that way, not in some stupid popularity contest.”

“At least I have you in my corner,” Caitlyn said, leaning a cheek against her hand and reluctantly turning the page.

“Always. Lucinda too. And Layla. And hell, I think you have that librarian wrapped around your finger at this point too.”

“Hmm, I don’t think it’s me he wants to be wrapped around,” Caity said with a brief quirk of her lips.

It had been a shitty few months. But right then, as Caity wryly teased Travis about a boy that he liked, he knew they were going to be okay. Travis’s lungs suddenly seemed to work again, and the breath he took felt like it had been months coming.