“Got your clean clothes for you,” she said, poking her head around the door. Rio knew he ought to be grateful. After all, he was used to doing his own laundry in London, but somehow the “thank you” got stuck in his throat. Instead he picked up his yellow T-shirt and held it close to his face. With a pang, he realized it no longer smelled of home.

Fran put the rest of his clothes down on the bed with a sigh and gave him one of those funny, over-her-glasses looks she was fond of. Then she cleared her throat pointedly.

“I know this is not the easiest of times for you,” she said, her cheeks slightly flushed, “but I’m sure your mom wouldn’t want you to spend all your time locked away.”

Rio flinched. When would she get that he didn’t want to talk about his mother? Not to anyone. And especially not to her.

“I . . . I thought you might like this?”

He heard her leave the room and then reenter, placing something on the bed beside him. Something that made the bedcovers dip ever so gently under its weight. Rio kept his eyes pinned on the ocean, so hard his vision blurred, and it wasn’t until the door had closed that he bothered to look.

It was a shoebox.

Why had she left him a shoebox?

And then he noticed the small label in the top-right-hand corner with handwriting that was like a punch to the heart.

My Box of Joy

“Mum?” Rio whispered, something hard and brittle snapping deep within him.

He trailed his fingers over the lid. As far back as he could remember, his mom had always collected things that made her smile.

Never expensive things. Not gold rings or fancy trinkets. Simple things. A train ticket from the time they’d been to the beach, heart-shaped pebbles because she said hearts made from nature were the best kind of all, a white angel’s feather, and seashells in which you could hear the ocean from miles and miles away.

She said she collected them because they reminded her to be happy.

He hadn’t quite understood it at the time. Why did anyone need reminding to be happy? Surely it was as natural as breathing? But she had said being happy wasn’t as easy for some people as it was for others. And so, over time, Rio had grown to love collecting things for her. Anything to stop her being so sad.

It took a few moments for him to open the box.

First, he popped his fingers under the lid. Then he pried one side up before carefully removing it altogether. The shoebox was crammed full of various ornaments, papers, and even an old silk scarf, which when Rio pressed it to his nose, had the faintest tang of his mom’s jasmine perfume still caught in the fibers.

Item by item, he pulled everything from the box and laid it all out on the bed around him. An old report card from school saying that Bella showed remarkable musical ability for someone her age. A receipt for her very first violin. Various birthday cards. The acceptance letter from the music school in New York. A photo of her on a boat with windswept hair and the biggest grin Rio had ever seen. Even a boat ticket.