Sandy brown. Narrative. Jamie.
Jamie came with the faint, anxious air of being caught between a rock and a hard place, protecting his sister from onlookers and prying and giving his sister exactly what it was she wanted, the clock put back together like a magic trick. It was, for Jamie, nine tenths about family that he stood in Caspar's home and said something meaningless and polite about the place, and didn't look stunned by Dietre being both way too young for Hugh, and also way dumb for liking Hugh.
The latter was probably hardest of all, tbh. He hugged Amy, and he took like, half a waffle - dry, he wasn't cured, okay - and he ate it in tiny, tiny bites as he watched the clock get fitted back together and Jamie didn't think, even a little bit about what he'd get. Memories in Repose got tossed around like they'd been thrown in the washer, the kind of business-like exposure which made things more or less raw, but never the same.
He was small. He was small enough that he lisped still and he was four tomorrow and excitement was bubbles bursting, fizzy and full and sharply sweet and expectant in his throat. And he was being chased around the hallway, the long one with the bannister rail and in fits of helpless giggles, the kind that doubled him over and made him howl so hard with laughter, his sister was laughing behind him.
Mom was in the door to the kitchen, her hand cupped around the baby's head but her smile was warm and open and like a present he'd opened already early. "Don't let him slip," she said and "I promise," Molly, earnest even hiccuping with laughter and Jamie felt then like it was stretched like taffy, like cotton candy between mom and eldest sister, a web of being loved hard enough he wouldn't fall.
Chased, and chased up the stairs, and falling into the rumpled comforter on Molly's bed and tickled until he shrieked, tickled until he was laughing so hard he was gasping in thick, short drags of air, stop-it-stop-it, except there, with his sisters and his brother hovering in the door, he didn't kinda, want it to.