"My goodness," my grandmother says as she waves a cloud of dust out of her face. She coughs for a moment before clearing the air and saying, "I didn't realize it was this bad up here. Bit embarrassed, really. Hope you're not allergic to dust."

We're in the attic, and all around us are boxes packed up to the ceiling. Old furniture covered in sheets to protect them from dust and anything else up here that we can't currently see. I shake my head as I take a small step deeper into the room. "No. I'm not allergic to dust. I don't think I'm allergic to anything, actually."

"That's good news," she says as she brushes some dust off a box nearby and pulls open its flaps. "Your papa used to be allergic to everything when he was a kid. Pollen. Dust. Cat dandruff. Not food, thank the heavens, but everything that floated in the air. He grew out of it though. Took many years, and thousands of inhalers, but his body finally learned how to cope."

Not knowing what I'm really looking for, I open a box of my own and start digging through what looks to be Christmas decorations. "How long have you two known each other?" I ask as I prick my finger on an ornament hook.

"Most of our lives," she replies a moment later. "We met when we were children. Lived down the block from each other. Our mums were friends, so we were friends too. And then when we grew up, we grew into ourselves and each other. It seemed to be the natural progression of things."

"So it was arranged?" I ask, scooting the Christmas box aside to start digging through another one.

She shakes her head. "Not at all. We were just very close, and we fell in love during our teenage years. It was actually very romantic. Somewhere up here is my old wedding dress, as well as our wedding album. But also some photo albums from when we were children. Let me know if you find them. I can show you."

I nod my head as I sift through old moth-eaten clothes that are probably older than I am before setting it aside to dig through another box. "So what am I looking for exactly? The album with the clippings? What does it look like?"

"Oh, just a black book," she replies. "It looks like a photo album, but it's actually a scrapbook. I believe it has an embroidered flower on the front cover. Something an old friend of ours gave us years ago."

We spend the next few minutes in silence as the two of us remain focused on our mission. But I keep finding myself getting distracted by other things. Gardening books, cookbooks, clothes from what looks like the 60s that I know can't belong to them. Some old toys ranging from the 60s to the 90s. I stumble across an Easy-Bake Oven from decades ago, and I wonder if it still works.

"It's amazing that you still have all these things up here," I say, my voice growing a bit hoarse from all the dust. "I mean, some of these things are probably worth something. Are these Pokémon cards?" I ask as I flip through an old binder filled with little cartoon character cards.

She nods her head. "Jack loved Pokémon. Collected the cards for years, even into his adulthood. When he was a boy, he would watch the cartoon for hours. I think he still watched it into his teenage years, but he would never admit it. Funny, the things we hide from people about ourselves. And for no reason."

I shrug my shoulders. "He probably just didn't want to get made fun of."

"Perhaps," she replies. "You can keep those cards, if you want. I don't know if you're interested in those things, but if you they're yours."

I shake my head. "No. That's okay. Thanks though. It was never really my thing." I set the binder back in the box and slide it aside, making room for the next.

"So what is your thing?" she asks, grunting as she pulls another box toward her. "Your mum says you're quite the scholar."

"I guess," I respond, my cheeks turning a light shade of pink. "I take school very seriously. Always have, actually." I don't tell her I'm second in my class, mostly because being number two is still a touchy subject for me.

"Are you part of any clubs?"

"Here? I was part of the Linguistics Club," I reply, sorting through another box. "But that was mostly because I wanted to spend more time with Elsie. But back home, I'm part of several clubs. I'm on the student council, I'm part debate club, I'm the Editor-in-Chief of the school paper, I help out with the school plays as the stage manager, and I'm part of French Club."

"Goodness," she says, and I hear a note of pride in her voice that makes my heart swell. "You're a very busy young lady. Do you participate in any athletic programs?"

I shake my head. "Not really. But my best friend Beth does. She's on the track team as well as the girl's basketball and volleyball teams. And she makes me go running with her twice a week before school starts."

"Guess you don't have much time for boyfriends then?" she asks, and the back of my neck prickles at the question. I turn my head to look at her, expecting to see her watching me closely. But her face is still buried in the boxes as she continues to look for my grandfather's garden album and tape.

"I mean, I've had a boyfriend," I say. "But he turned out to be... not what I was expecting." Understatement of the century, but I don't want to get into the whole sexual assault thing right now. It's weird enough talking about all this with her to discuss the worst night of my life.

"That happens sometimes, unfortunately," she says with a sigh. "People can be disappointing."

"They can also surprise you," I reply, thinking about Baker and the weird course our friendship has taken since last year.

Now she does turn around to look at me. "How do you mean?"

I swallow hard, suddenly very nervous, as I say, "There's someone else back home. A guy. We have a strange friendship, but I... he means a lot to me." I almost slip up and say that I like him. And I'm not quite willing to say those words aloud just yet. "But we're kind of academic rivals, you know? So we shouldn't really be friends at all. But he's one of my best friends. Maybe my closest."

She smiles at me. "Well, he sounds like a nice young lad. Smart like you, I take it?" I nod my head. "Good. Stick with the smart ones, love."

"Yeah," I say, because I don't know what else to say to that. "Was he smart?" I ask, the question escaping my lips before I have time to stop it.

"Who?" she asks. I don't look at her, and she seems to guess the answer. "Jack? He excelled in school when he was a boy, but he struggled as he got older. Think it was the crowd he got himself into. Seedy lot, they were. One of his friends stole money out of my purse when they were in secondary school. Used it to by drugs." She sighs as she shakes her head. "That should've been our first clue."

There's a lump forming in my throat that I can't seem to swallow down. "So... is that when it started then? In high school?"

Another sigh. "Honestly, love, I don't know when it started. He told us he wasn't doing drugs back then. But I caught him smoking once when he was 15. And I know he was sneaking off to drink."

"Was he doing all that when he met my mom?" I ask.

"By the time he met your mum, he was fully addicted," she replies, and I cringe. "But he had moments of clarity. Sober moments when he'd realize what he was doing and would try to go sober. Sometimes it would last a few days, sometimes a few months. With your mum, it lasted quite a while. They met, and I thought she would be the one to save him. Oh, how he loved her. But then...." She hesitates, as if unsure if she should say what happened next.

"Then I came into the picture," I finish for her, and she winces. "I know. My mom told me."

"He was so excited to be a father," she says softly, and I look away, busying myself with another box. "Really. They weren't together very long when she got pregnant, you know. But he was happy. Happiest I remember seeing him. He talked about all the things he wanted to do with you. All the places he wanted to show you. And when you were born, things were okay. For a while. But then your mum found the drugs in his pocket, and she didn't want you around any of that. Told him he had to stop. But there was so much pressure on him, you know. He was trying to be a good man. He was a good man."

I shake my head. "No," I say a little snappily. "He wasn't. A good man would've stopped. A good man would've chosen his daughter of the drugs."

She falls silent for a moment as I continue to sort through the boxes, fighting the tears that are threatening to fall again. "He was lost to them, sweetheart. Lost long before he even met your mum. And sometimes, no amount of love can bring a person home when they're that far gone. He wanted to do well by you. But he knew. So he broke up with your mum. Didn't want to hold either of you back. Then he moved back home. Tried to get help. Your papa and I spent so much money and time helping him get better."

"Guess he didn't want it that badly," I whisper so quietly that I wonder if she can even hear me. A tear slips, and I cringe, hoping she didn't see it.

"There's a saying," she says. "That you can't love someone else until you learn to love yourself. And he... he hated himself for his lack of willpower, Summer. He hated himself for his inability to get off the drugs. Not a day went by that he didn't think about you. But he couldn't bring himself to have a relationship with you. Not when he wasn't sober."

I don't know if I should believe her. Hell, I don't even know if I want to believe her. My whole life, I've only known my dad as someone who wasn't present. Who didn't want to be present. Who never reached out at all. And now this woman, who I've also never met and who also didn't seem to want to be present, is telling me he was trying to protect me from himself. It's so much. Too much for my first day here.

"Here it is!" my grandmother exclaims, and I jump, startled and confused. "The album. And look here! The tape is here too."

I wrinkle my nose. "Tape? Do you have a VCR anywhere to play it with?"

She nods her head. "Downstairs in the sitting room next to the DVD player."

"You still have them hooked up?" I ask, surprised. Most TVs I know back home don't even have hookups for VCRs anymore."

"Our television is a bit old, I'm afraid," she replies. "Your papa and I never really jumped onto the streaming nonsense. Netlu and Amaflix and whatnot. We just like to cozy up on the couch with a good old fashioned VHS or DVD when we watch movies."

"Netflix and Amazon," I correct her, the hint of a smile pulling at my lips.

She waves her hand at me. "Such nonsense. Well, come on, love. Let's go downstairs and show your papa. Can't deny him the chance to show off now, can we?" I giggle a little as she walks with me down the stairs, her hand pressed to the small of my back. It's comforting in a way I can't describe, but I'm still unsettled by the conversation we just had. I'm starting to see a new side of my dad. A side I never wanted to see. And, if I'm being honest, it kind of scares me a bit. I'm not used to be being so wrong about something. And spending my whole life thinking my dad wanted nothing to do with me feels wrong somehow. This shift in perspective has me questioning so much, and I really don't know how to deal with it, or where I should go from here.

Author's Note:
Summer's whole world is being flipped upside down here, and she's so torn up on how to feel about it. Can't wait to know what you all think! Got a few more UK chapters, and then we're heading home. Let me know what you all think in the comments! Next chapter will be posted as soon as I can finish it! Stay safe and healthy until then, my dears!
XOXO,
~Aly