By noon they were done.
The apartment looked hollowed out. The yellow walls with their crooked stars were still there. The slightly uneven bookshelf Asher had built was still there, too awkward to move. The small mark on the kitchen doorframe where he'd tracked the twins' heights every six months, dates and measurements in his handwriting climbing upward—that was still there too.
Asher stood in the empty hallway for a moment after everyone else had gone down to the cars.
He pressed his fingers against the doorframe. Against the small pencil marks.
Kai - 18 months. Lily - 18 months.
Kai - 2 years.
Lily - 2 years - "I'm taller!" She wasn't.
Five years of marks climbing toward the ceiling.
He took a photo on his phone.
Then he locked the apartment door and went downstairs.
Kael's penthouse looked different with their things in it.
