"Hey, Jeremy, it's me. Just wanted to let you know the house closes tomorrow, and I'll wire you the money after that. Hope everyone is well there. I'm just packing up the last of Dad's things. I'm going to donate it all to Goodwill. Let me know if there was anything of his you wanted, and I'll mail it to you. Talk to you later."

I put the phone in my pocket and grabbed another empty box. The sale of the bar had closed just the week before, and now my childhood home was being packed up so that the new owners could move in with their two little kids and dog. Camden Beach was a good place to raise a family, but I no longer had any ties to the town. Most of my friends had married and moved away or started families.

I stopped and looked at the stacks of boxes sitting in the center of an empty room that was heavily populated with dust bunnies. It really hadn't been a home since Dad died. He made it a place to come home to, a place to feel happy and secure. The house itself meant little to me without my dad sitting in his easy chair doling out tidbits of knowledge and life theories.

Rebecca and I had spoken mostly through text messages. Although those weren't always successful. Technology still had its limits when you were standing out on a century old vineyard. She said it all depended on where she was standing in the yard and if the sun and the trees and all the various elements of nature were lined up perfectly. I was happy to tell her that Trent’s place got shut down by the health department. I doubted it was the cockroach she planted but it was good to know he hadn’t succeeded. She was having a blast, and at the end of every text conversation, she always let me know that there was plenty of work on the vineyard for me. I'd had so much business to take care of with the house and selling the bar, I hadn't had time to think about a job. Dylan and I had only exchanged words that dealt with dissolving the business. I was glad he was out of my life for good.

I'd left Dad's books for last. Something about them made me miss him more. Maybe because I knew he'd held each one in his hands a long time. Some even had the lingering smell of his aftershave and stale cigar smoke from the few times a month he'd splurge and buy himself an expensive cigar. He would suck on the thing with his eyes closed and his nostrils wide, breathing and tasting it as if he was eating fine chocolate.

I pulled his signed copy of Moby Dick off the shelf. It was an old edition that he claimed was worth a lot of money, but when he had it appraised, it turned out the author's signature was a fake. But he’d still insisted it was valuable. As I lowered it into the box, a card fell out. He was always shoving pictures and cards and letters into books for safe keeping.

I picked up the card and turned it over. It was a handmade Valentine card, complete with glittery paper hearts. I opened it up and recognized the writing immediately. It must have been old because she was still drawing little hearts and smiley faces over her letters.

It was probably the first time I'd smiled in months. Of course, it was Rebecca and pretty much everything about her made me smile. Even an old Valentine's card that was leaving a pile of red glitter in the dust on the floor.

The day I took Rebecca to the airport, we had kissed and hardly said a word to each other. It was too hard. Life had separated us after the accident, but almost from the first second she'd popped back into my life with the early morning, scattered phone call about boogeymen, she was back fully in my life. Like she had never left. It was always so natural between us, two people who had always been meant for each other but who had been kept apart by a string of circumstances. Even the timing of our births had put a chasm between us. It was hard to know just how different things would’ve been if I'd been two years younger and had met Rebecca instead of Emily on the first day of high school. But none of that mattered now. And that long string of circumstances was no longer important.

I'd let the love of my life fly off to another continent because I was still punishing myself for loving her. I was such a jackass. I was done feeling guilty about it.