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)
I followed Hope out of the room, buoyed by the idea that I could finally ask all of my questions without worrying about being found out or dredging up bad memories. It seemed like a long shot to hope that Savannah’s mother knew anything. But as Hope had said, if anybody did, it would be Miss Martha.
Chapter Twenty-One
FORD
Ispent the rest of the day going through the boxes of my father’s files that I’d pulled aside well over a year before, when I’d first come up with my plan to find a chink in his armor. So far, I was still batting zero.
Paige took a break while Stella was napping to come up and help me, relaying that all was well with Hope and that she was going to meet with Miss Martha the next time she came over. That settled, together we sat in ancient, threadbare armchairs, sorting through paperwork. I grabbed anything that looked like it related to business. Paige took things that looked like they had to do with the house. She found a few more invoices from the garage renovation I didn’t remember from the early eighties, mixed in with other things, and a few invoices for artwork that had sold at auction in the years before my father’s death.
At this point, we’d accounted for over half of the missing art. When Scarlett, Tenn’s wife, had first come to Heartstone Manor, she’d tracked down some of the pieces. Formerly an art history professor and appraiser, she had more expertise than anyone else. Piece by piece, we were finding out where the family art had gone, but no one had tracked down what Prentice had done with the money from the sales.
I suspected he’d used a chunk of it to pay off Vanessa, who we’d learned had been blackmailing him after she’d discovered that the woman he’d planned to make the new Mrs. Sawyer was Cole’s wife. We had no clue what Vanessa did with the money, considering she’d been broke when she died. Though the way Vanessa could spend, it was possible she’d blown it all on luxurious vacations, jewelry, and clothes. I knew from experience, nobody could run through cash like Vanessa.
Even after a few hours, Paige and I didn’t find anything truly interesting in the files. No love letters from Paul to Sarah. Nothing of my mother’s at all. Since I’d found the envelope with my mother’s letters in Paige’s room, I’d considered abandoning the search for my father’s killer in favor of finding whatever she might have left behind in this house.
I wanted my name cleared. I wanted my father’s killer to face justice. But as I looked at Paige, her brow furrowed, a dark curl escaping her bun as she studied the open file in front of her, I wondered if any of that was really worth it. My father was dead, and very few people had any regret about that. I wished he’d been a better father, a better man, a better husband, but I didn’t wish him back at the head of the dining room table in Heartstone Manor. Maybe that made me an asshole, but I could live with that.
I wanted Stella to grow up in a house filled with love—something that would be impossible if Prentice was still alive. And Tenn had Scarlett’s kids—his, now that they were married. Their father was mostly out of the picture, from what I could tell, and Tenn loved those kids like they were his own. The same went for Finn with Savannah’s Nicky. My heart lightened as I thought about those children growing up in the Manor as it was now, filled with family and love.
No, I wouldn’t bring my father back if I could. I didn’t want the future he’d seen for us. I wanted this, what we were building here, all of us together.
I looked at Paige again, wondering. She was so natural with the kids. She’d be such a great mom. I had no idea what went into being a good father, but so far, Griffen, Tenn, and Finn were great examples. I hadn’t thought much about having kids until I’d gotten out of prison and come home to a house full of them.
It was the laughter that got me. I didn’t love the mess they left behind, or the noise when they were shouting back and forth to each other in the house. But I craved the laughter. I wanted it for myself. I wanted to kick a soccer ball. Throw a baseball. Take a kid fishing or camping, like I’d loved to when I was young.
I could still remember the years when my stepmother Darcy was alive. She’d brought love to this house, shining so bright she banished my father’s shadow for the short years she was with us, until she died. But in that time, I’d forged my best childhood memories, rambling in the woods with Griffen, trying to ditch the younger kids so we could dam up a stream and see what happened, or build a fort out of branches and moss.