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Then I look at everything they’ve decorated here in the great room.

“It’s good,” I say.

Her shoulders drop half an inch. Her eyebrows rise. “Good?”

“Yes.”

“That’s all I get?”

“What were you expecting?”

“I don’t know. Maybe a thank you. Possibly applause. Maybe a small parade?”

I fight my smile. “Don’t push it.”

She smiles, and I swear I can feel it on me like the warmth from the sun.

I understand suddenly why Shiloh has attached himself to her so quickly. She’s easy to move toward. Easy to want to be close to. Dangerously easy.

Shiloh runs back to us carrying something made from Popsicle sticks and enough glitter to permanently contaminate my house.

He shoves it at me.

“We made you this.”

I take it. It’s a popsicle stick picture frame, painted in alternating red and white like a candy cane.

Inside is a photograph. The three of us. Except it isn’t.

It’s Shiloh in the middle, Noelle on one side, and on the other is a photograph of me that someone has apparently printed and cut out before gluing it into place.

I recognize it. It’s my headshot from the company website. Navy suit. No smile. The photographer spent twenty minutes trying to get me to look approachable and finally gave up. Someone has cut around my shoulders with safety scissors. The edges are jagged. My left ear is missing.

Next to the two of them, laughing, flour on their faces, I look like a stranger who wandered into the wrong picture.

Shiloh put me there anyway. My throat tightens.

“It’s our family,” Shiloh says.

I don’t move. I don’t know what to say.

There used to be a family picture on the piano. Me, Shiloh as a newborn, and her. I took it down the week she left and put it in a drawer, and I haven’t opened that drawer since.

For two years, there’s been nothing on the piano at all. My thumb moves over the glitter. It comes away sparkling. It will likely never come off.

“We thought we’d make a new one when your daddy got home. With all three of us really in it.”

All three of us.

I look at her.

She’s not smiling now. Her expression is soft, uncertain, like she understands exactly what this might mean to Shiloh and exactly how badly it could hurt him if we get it wrong.

She looks up at me from where she’s crouched, one hand resting lightly on Shiloh’s back, and for a second I see it there, too. What it might mean to her. I think I’d like to belong somewhere again. She’d written those words in her profile. It had been one of the reasons why she’d risen to the top of the pile.

This is why I chose her. Not the pretty brown hair. Not the curves I can’t stop noticing. Not the soft mouth I’m already thinking far too much about.

This.