No One But You (Silver Springs #2)(99)

The sun poured through large holes between the burned studs of the left wall. Almost everything below that was scorched black and looked ready to disintegrate. She didn’t want that to happen while she was there. With her luck, the roof would collapse. But she needed only a few minutes, just enough time to look in places the firefighters and police might not have thought to check.

Problem was, her house was so small that there weren’t a lot of places her pictures could be. She might’ve taken them out and left them on the couch. She’d been doing a little scrapbooking to pass the time. But she didn’t think that was the case. Dawson had been on the couch one of the nights before the fire, and she was pretty sure she’d remember if she’d had to move the plastic container she kept them in.

The side table had a sliding door. Maybe she’d stuck them in there and the firefighters hadn’t noticed that it opened...

She found some pictures Jayden had colored or drawn at Petra’s that she’d saved. Surprisingly enough, they were okay. The table had protected them. She was happy to find something that held sentimental value, but those hand-drawn pictures couldn’t replace the photographs she’d had a professional take of him as a baby, or the photographs of her parents.

Where could she have put that plastic case? It had to have been in the closet, under the couch or in this side table.

Unless she’d shoved it in the bottom of the painted armoire in her bedroom. She’d had more clothes before the fire, but still not a great deal. There’d always been plenty of room in that armoire. She’d put various odds and ends in there...

The bedroom had suffered more damage than the living room. A lot of the floor was gone, showing the crawl space underneath. She tested each step to make sure it wasn’t going to give beneath her weight as she moved gingerly to the charred armoire near the devoured mattress where she and Jayden had slept for the year she’d been separated from Sly. The sight of it frightened her. Had she not been sufficiently awakened and capable of getting them out...

If Sly set that fire, he really had lost his mind, she decided.

She couldn’t get the armoire open. It was too damaged. Filled with renewed hope—because a jammed armoire door could easily explain why the firefighters hadn’t found the plastic container she’d requested—she used a crowbar from the Clevengers’ garage to break open the door.

That was where her hope died. Although she had some books, various notes, bills and checking account information in there, stacked on the small shelves to one side, the pictures she most wanted weren’t to be found.

This was the last place they could be. She wouldn’t have put them in the attic or crawl space. She was afraid of spiders, avoided those places entirely—and had no need to use them. She hadn’t had enough belongings to worry about the extra storage space.

Standing back, she stared glumly at the odds and ends she’d discovered. There were a few loose pictures of Jayden, but they weren’t the ones she loved the most. The ones taken when he was nine months, that had best captured his sweet little smile and spirit at the time, were gone. So were the only pictures she had of her parents.

Sadie had never felt more alone in the world than at this very moment. She was standing in a house she believed her ex-husband had torched, most of her stuff was damaged or destroyed and everything that really mattered to her was gone. Not only that, if she couldn’t figure out some way to tie Sly to what he’d done, she’d be facing the daunting prospect of moving to a completely new place, where she wouldn’t know a soul, in order to be rid of him for good. How would she start over without so much as a babysitter she felt she could trust to watch Jayden while she worked? Where would she go? What would she do?

She wished she could talk to her mother, wished she hadn’t lost her so soon. Her father had done a good job in her mother’s absence, but then she’d lost him, too. She’d had only Sly in her life from that point forward, dominating and controlling everything and making her doubt her own abilities—sometimes even her sanity.

She didn’t try to stop the tears that rolled down her cheeks. Crying was self-indulgent. She was feeling sorry for herself and she shouldn’t, but she didn’t care. The sense of loss was too overwhelming. Pictures were only pictures, but the people those pictures represented were gone, and the pictures were all she’d had left.

She didn’t hear the door. She’d sunk to the floor, buried her face in her arms, which rested on her knees, and was sobbing like a child when she heard her name.

Startled, she looked up to see Dawson crouched beside her.

“Everything’s going to be okay,” he said as he drew her to her feet and pulled her into his arms.

“They’re gone,” she said, her voice muffled by his shirt. “All of my pictures. I feel like I can’t even remember what my mother looked like without them.”

He didn’t say anything, just held her close.

“I hate him,” she said after gulping for breath. “I hate him and I hate love. Love is what got me into this. I don’t ever want to love anyone again.”

She was essentially telling him she didn’t want to love him, either, but that didn’t seem to upset him. Maybe he knew it was too late, that love had already made a joke of her words, because his hands were gentle as they moved in a comforting fashion over her back. “Love isn’t the problem, Sadie,” he said, his voice soothing. “Love is the answer. That’s what makes life worth living.”