Bailey hurried upstairs. She would check the guest rooms first. All the spare closets. Then, depending on what she found, she would move on to the attic.
The closets were oddly empty. As if a family didn’t live here, she thought. In a way, she supposed one hadn’t in a long time. Paul’s description of it as a shell was uncomfortably accurate.
Bailey flipped through the meager contents, then moved on. One of the closets held little-girl party and special-occasion dresses. Ruffles and lace, bows and ribbon.
For some reason, gazing at those frilly little outfits brought tears to her eyes. She imagined the joyful little girl who had worn them and wondered what had happened to her.
But she knew. Tragedy. Loss. A broken heart.
I won’t leave him, Raine. I promise you that.
Bailey blinked against the tears, cursing her raging hormones. She had made that promise; she hoped to God she could keep it.
The attic was next. It was a walk-in, Logan had pointed to it that first day, on her tour of the house. Light filtered through the one window, falling over the cluttered interior, highlighting some objects and leaving others in shadow. She found the light switch to the right of the door and flipped it up. Fluorescent light spilled evenly over everything.
So many boxes, she thought. Which would they be in?
Recent, so not as dusty. Stacked together. Most probably toward the front, certainly not buried. Marked “True’s Things” or nothing at all. Like an unmarked grave.
Stop it, Bailey. Get busy.
She started with the cartons closest to the door and made her way deeper into the space. The farther she got from the door, the dustier it became. She sneezed several times; her throat began to tickle. Near the window, she stopped at the sound of tires on the gravel drive. She tiptoed to it, though she didn’t know why, and peered down.
Logan, home already. Pulling into the garage. Climbing out of the Porsche, going around to the passenger side. No. She’d just begun—
But then she realized, she had done this before. With her mind’s eye she saw herself. Frantically going through every box, every dresser drawer. Just the way she had today.
The same day she had gone to retrieve the shoe, only to find it gone. The day that had changed everything.
Nothing. She’d found nothing of True’s that day, and she would find nothing now.
“Bailey!”
She quickly, quietly closed the attic door and hurried down the hall to the top of the stairs. “Up here!” she called back.
He appeared at the bottom of the stairs, looked up at her. “You’re flushed. Are you all right?”
“Fine.” She forced a sleepy smile and stretched. “I was napping.”
A small part of her died at the lie. She prayed that one day, when she told him and explained why, he would forgive her.
“It smells delicious down here.”
“The brownies. How about I come down and fix you one?”
He smiled. “I’d like that.”
“Give me just a minute.”
She ran to the bedroom, pulled the coverlet back, then scrunched the pillow. From there, she darted to the bathroom, washed her hands, splashed her face and brushed her hair, trying to clean the dust off her.
That done, she went to meet him in the kitchen. “Everything go all right with your meeting?”
“Fine.” He bent and kissed her. “Fears allayed, financing solidly in place.”
“Good.” She crossed to the pan of brownies, mind racing for an inconspicuous way to ask him True’s shoe size even as she acknowledged there wasn’t one. “Ice cream?”
“I’ll go with your recommendation.”
He sounded amused, even lighthearted. As if there were nothing wrong. As if nothing had changed between them.
As far as he was concerned, all had been resolved.
“You’re not having one?” he asked as she set the plate in front of him, then took a seat.
“I already did. With Paul.”
“Paul?” He took a bite of the ice cream and pastry, then rolled his eyes. “Really good.”
“Glad you think so. He came up to see if I needed something from the market, then confessed to being a complete brownie-hound.” She glanced up at him. “He was telling me about a girl he dated at LSU.”
“How did that come up?”
“I asked him why he wasn’t married.”
Logan laughed. “Poor Paul.”
Bailey ignored that. “She broke his heart. Did you meet her?”
“I did. She seemed nice enough.”
“That’s not the impression I got.”
“Really?”
“She broke it off with him because she didn’t want to be married to a guy who smelled like a barn.”
“He never told me that, but it makes sense. When they started dating he was in vet school, studying to be a large-animal vet. He was almost done when he chucked it. Said he wanted to work with horses every day and came to run the farm.”
She frowned. “I wonder why he didn’t tell you? You’re his closest friend.”
“All that sharing isn’t a guy thing. Besides, Paul’s extremely private. Always has been. Truthfully, I’m sort of blown away that he revealed as much as he did to you.”
… ’til it’s all blown away …
“The girl Paul dated, what was her name? Do you remember?”
“If my memory serves, her name was Cassie.” He scooped up the last of the brownie. “You seem awfully interested in Paul.”
“He’s a big part of your life. Our life here.” He didn’t comment and she went on. “What about his family? He told me a little, but not that much.”
“Almost as big a mess as mine.” She cocked an eyebrow and he smiled.
“Okay, that was an exaggeration. It was just him and his mom. Don’t know much about his dad, never met him. He cut out on them when Paul was really young.”
“We have that in common,” she said. “I wonder why he never mentioned it?”
“Maybe because the similarity stops there. Unlike your mom, his was angry. And bitter. She took all that out on Paul. I wasn’t over there much, but she wasn’t … kind.”
“That’s why he loved your mom so much, because she was.”
He nodded. “And that’s why he took it so hard when she died.”