Colton Christmas Protector (The Coltons of Texas #12)(4)
Penelope Barrington Clark stood in the threshold of Andrew’s office/man cave and gathered her courage. She’d procrastinated cleaning out the room as long as she could. Immediately after his death, well-meaning friends had offered to help her with the painful task, but she’d put them off. How could she possibly throw out or give away all the things Andrew had owned, touched, cherished? Wasn’t it bad enough he was gone? Losing all of the possessions that cluttered his home office would have added salt to her wounds.
But the house had sold more quickly than she’d anticipated it would. She and Nicholas were downsizing, moving to a more affordable home. Ironic that she, a Barrington, needed to worry about finances, but she refused to take a dime from her wealthy father, and Andrew’s death benefit from the police department didn’t cover the mortgage and all her expenses. She knew she’d have to get a job, was all right with the idea, but she’d put it off. She’d wanted to dedicate as much time to Nicholas while he was young as she could. He would only be a toddler once, and she couldn’t stand the idea of missing any of his baby days.
The new house needed work, but it was in an outlying area with good schools and plenty of parks with playgrounds where Nicholas could run and climb as he grew older.
Andrew will never see Nicholas start kindergarten or jump out of a swing. The kamikaze thought shot straight to her heart with a sharp, piercing ache. She squeezed her eyes shut and balled her hands at her sides as she forced the stray thought down, tucked it away. If only she could pack up the random painful reminders and reflections like shards of a broken mirror to be discarded forever. Time was supposed to heal her wounds, but eighteen months after Andrew’s death, she still groped her way through the morass of memories and unexpected flashes of insight that dragged her down like quicksand.
She shook her head and steeled herself with a deep breath. Just do this. Get it over with.
Rolling the tension from her shoulders, Penelope strode into the man cave/office and moved an empty box to the top of Andrew’s desk for easier packing. She could start with the ugly stuff, the tacky things, the dear-God-what-were-you-thinking items. They would be the easiest to get rid of, she figured. From there, she could work her way up to sorting through the commendation awards for heroism from the police department, the family pictures, the personal papers and sentimental items that screamed Andrew.
She took the woman’s leg lamp, á la A Christmas Story, from the top of the bookcase and groaned, remembering when he’d brought the gag gift home from a Christmas party.
“It’s a major award!” Andrew had joked when she’d sneered at his party gift and tried to usher it straight out to the trash. Now that she had her chance to throw it away, she hesitated. Maybe one of the guys at the police station would like to have the lamp as a memento of Andrew’s quirky sense of humor.
“Oh, Lord. If I second-guess every item in this room, I’ll be here until Christmas.” She chucked the leg lamp into a box for charity and moved on to the trophies he’d won with the community softball league. She couldn’t bring herself to toss those, so she put them aside to go into storage.
The taxidermy-preserved fish was a no-brainer. Trash!
“Dead animals are not home decor,” she’d argued when Andrew had brought home the prize bass mounted on a plaque and intending to hang it on the living-room wall.
“Do you know how much I paid to have this mounted?” he’d countered, as if that made the bass any less hideous to her.
His office wall had been their compromise, so long as he didn’t put it on the wall opposite the door, where she’d see it when she walked down the hall.
She shuddered as she lifted the dusty bass down from the wall now, surprised by how heavy the ugly thing was. As she struggled with it, the trophy fish flopped backward and thunked against the wood-paneled wall.
Trying not to get dust in her nose, Penelope carried the bass to the discard box. The inscribed metal plate under the fish’s belly read Caddo Lake Largemouth Bass, 20 inches, 4.88 pounds, July 5, 2013. Andrew had been so proud of that catch. He’d bragged about it at cookouts for the rest of that summer and on occasion afterward, when the topic of fishing came up. Maybe she should... No! Get rid of it. The new house would not have room for all of Andrew’s valuable things, much less his junk.
As she strolled back across the room to continue the packing, she noticed a dent in the wall where the fish plaque had banged the paneling. Great. Something else to repair before the new owners took possession. Penelope lifted a hand to rub her fingers over the indentation, and as she stroked the wood paneling she found that the wall had unexpected give. When she pushed a little harder, a section of the paneling came loose and fell back into a recess behind the wall.
“Lovely,” she grumbled under her breath. “Now instead of a dent you have to replace a whole—” She stopped mid-gripe and furrowed her brow. Behind the section of paneling that had come loose, a thick file folder and a small box rested on a horizontal two-by-four inside the wall. A hidden file? What could that be about? Had Andrew put this file and box there or had the house’s previous owner?
Before removing the hidden items, Penelope wiped her hand on her yoga pants and mentally tried to quell the nervous jumble in her gut. Probably an old case file and piece of evidence. No reason to think Andrew was keeping secrets from her. Maybe it wasn’t even Andrew’s. Maybe it was a rare jewel or coin collection with papers of authenticity worth thousands of dollars.