Chapter 19

If he thought she was doing something, he didn’t let on. He simply walked past her to the kitchen. She went back to her seat, flopped down, and finally examined the room. It was the emptiest room she had ever seen. It was full of fancy furniture and a beautiful grand piano that needed a good cleaning, but it was voided of memories. There were no framed portraits of loved ones, no plants or vases of flowers to show that life actually was there. In her parent’s parlor, there were framed pictures she drew on paper as a child. Her first pair of shoes dripped in a bronze liquid and seated in the middle of the fire mantle. Paintings of her great-grandmother on her mother’s side, distant cousins, and even photos of some of her daddy’s friends and families from this same town. But his room was naked of all the warmth of loved ones, or even love at that.

“He was a man who believed money was more important than love,” Garrison interrupted her thoughts.

“I was told that your father