chapter 34
Nic
When I was four, I won first place in a sandcastle contest. To this day, I still can’t recall what I made. Okay, that’s a lie. While the other boys were pounding sand into cool s**t like fire trucks or spaceships, I happily sculpted a flawless replica of My Little Pony.
Okay, so in reality it was a blob with squiggly lines that were supposed to be horsehair, but according to my mother, it was perfect.
There were many things that I remembered about that day: the horrible sunburn, the sand that somehow managed to find its way up my butt, my father’s scowl when he realized what I’d built, but most of all, I remembered the beaming smile on my mother’s face.
Standing in the foyer of my parents’ home, I held the ornate picture frame that contained a photo of Mother and me, ca
