I carried the box upstairs. I couldn’t do much else in the house until the packing boxes I had ordered online that morning were delivered.

My stomach growled.

“On the other hand, if you do have some porridge…” I told the bear on my way back for the second load. I loathed the thought of going to the grocery store, having to face people.

I carried up another box, then another and another.

People who said physical labor was meditative were big fat liars.

By the time I was on the fifth trip, my back was killing me. By the tenth, my hair hung into my face. By the fifteenth, my black sweater—which I’d sweated through—stuck to me like snakeskin. Dust covered me all over.

I was gasping for air at the top of the stairs when the doorbell rang.

Maybe they’d go away.

Hopeful seconds rolled by.

Then the doorbell rang again.

Bram!

I had forgotten about Violet’s attorney—all the blood was flowing to my muscles instead of my brain.

I dropped the box and ran, made the mistake of glancing at the gilded mirror in the foyer as I passed it. I looked like a child’s stuffed toy that had been sucked into a vacuum cleaner then rescued by a horrified parent: covered in dust, hair sticking out every which way, clothes askew. Obviously not right in so many ways.

I patted down my hair and tugged my sweater back into place. Zero improvement. Any self-respecting mother would toss that toy, order a new one online, and pretend that nothing had happened.

The bell rang for the third time.

“Coming!”

I forced a smile on my face. He was here to help me. Then I put the smile away. Teeth were not the way to go. Aw, damn.

Rabid honey badger. In a windstorm. Blown clear through a hedge.

No help for it now. I’d missed my chance to shower and change. My only hope was that at his age, Bram Dekker’s eyes weren’t what they used to be. Maybe he wouldn’t notice my disheveled appearance.

“Oh.” I froze in the open door, disoriented, a honey badger that touched its nose to an electric fence.

The man on the top step wasn’t seventy, not even half of that. He was pristine: impeccable black leather shoes, fancy New York City suit, fresh-cut dark hair.

He was far from California easy—no surfer dude, nothing like Trey—no sunshine about him. He was New York crisp. He had gravitas. That was the word. Steady as those giant concrete columns that held up highways. Like you could build on him.

“Sorry I’m early. I’m Bram.”

He was definitely not Bram.