Total pages in book: 108
Estimated words: 100853 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 504(@200wpm)___ 403(@250wpm)___ 336(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 100853 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 504(@200wpm)___ 403(@250wpm)___ 336(@300wpm)
Miss Martha nodded. “That was how it always seemed to me. I never would have thought she’d leave you. But I’m not surprised she didn’t stay with Prentice.”
“What happened to all of her things?” I asked, frustrated that we seemed to be at another dead end.
“Your father—” She shook her head. “He wanted every scrap of her burned. But I saved what I could.”
A small wave of hope hit me. “Where is it?” I asked.
“We’ll have to ask Savannah. In the attic, I think. Things got rearranged after a leak, but everything is still up there. We’ll just have to hunt it down. I’ll help you tomorrow. It’s been up there for thirty years. It’s not going anywhere. I don’t know how much help it’ll be,” she said. “You should talk to Harvey or Edgar. Both of them always had a soft spot for your mother.” She smiled faintly. “Everyone did except your father. They would have known who she met with, might recognize the name Paul Williams.”
It was worth a try. Harvey, our family lawyer, was more likely to talk than Edgar. I knew he’d argued with both Prentice and Edgar frequently, usually trying to talk them out of some of their more cutthroat business maneuvers. But he’d always kept my father’s secrets just as well as Edgar. It was hard to hope that he’d tell us anything useful.
She turned to Paige. “Are you hoping to find your father, dear?”
Paige let out a sigh and sipped her tea. “At first, I was. Now, I don’t know what I’m looking for.” Her eyes met mine over her teacup. “Or maybe I’ve already found it.”
I smiled back, wanting to fall into the icy blue of her eyes, a cold burn that seared all the way to my soul. We hadn’t been looking for each other. Not on purpose. But now that we’d found each other, I wasn’t going to lose her. No matter what Cole Haywood had planned.
Chapter Twenty-Two
PAIGE
“Ithink I know where it is,” Savannah was saying as she led us up the stairs to the attic. Griffen and Hope were right behind her, followed by Miss Martha. Ford and I brought up the rear.
I wasn’t used to having so much free time in the morning. Now that Hawk’s team was in charge of school drop-off and pickup, I found I missed the drive—the chattering voices on the way, the quiet and time to think on the drive back, and then hearing about their day when I picked them up in the afternoon. I hoped all of this wouldn’t last too much longer. I’d heard Ford say that the new team, Hawk, and some of the Sinclair people were working on a plan to make Cole Haywood call off the bounty, but Ford hadn’t heard what it was or if they even had anything solid. I was impatient to put all of this behind us. Without answers, we were stuck in a holding pattern.
Scarlett, Tenn’s wife, was usually in her workshop on the lower level first thing in the morning, creating the gorgeous glass art she sold in town and in galleries across the Southeast. This morning, she’d popped up as I was trying to figure out how to keep Stella occupied and offered to watch her while we searched in the attic. As odd as it felt to hand off my charge, I did—gratefully—still hoping, I supposed, that if we found Sarah’s things, among them might be something of my father’s.
It wasn’t too much of a stretch. After all, I’d found Sarah’s letters in my father’s trunk. Maybe his were in the box of her things. Except Miss Martha had been through all of those things. She would have remembered love letters. But maybe…
I couldn’t help hoping. I told myself I didn’t care, that I was just solving a puzzle, and the fact that the missing piece was my father didn’t matter—he’d left me, and I was over it. But that was a big, fat lie. Of course I cared. That was why I was here. And I wanted to know where he was—even if it was far too late for him to come back and be the father I’d missed all of my life.
At the top of the stairs, Savannah paused, hands on her hips, and scanned the line of connected rooms that made up the attic on this side of the Manor. “Back here, I think,” she said. “Is that what you remember, Mom?”
“I think so,” Miss Martha agreed, nodding with less surety than Savannah. “It’s been a few years since I rearranged up here after the roof leaked. I remember that her box didn’t get wet, but I switched it over to a plastic storage bin, just in case, and then I put it…” Her voice trailed off as she lost herself in memory, trying to track down exactly where she’d left Sarah’s things. “I hid them. Prentice never came up here, but…”