With a low growl, Griffen nudged us back into the hall and slammed the door shut. Anger hot in his eyes, he turned to Savannah. “You do not go into that room. When she comes back, hand her a shovel and a bottle of cleaning spray. She can clean it herself or she can pitch a tent in the woods.”
He strode to the next door, his jaw set, swearing to himself. Savannah shook her head, giving me a sympathetic glance. “He’s not wrong, but I still feel bad for her.”
“Me, too.” Sterling was a hot mess, no question. She wasn’t my favorite Sawyer. She wasn’t even in the top five. She was reckless, spoiled, petulant, and generally a brat. She’d also lost her mother when she was three, Darcy only four years later. Since then, Miss Martha was the closest thing she had to a parent. Prentice had barely noticed she was alive. Braxton, the only sibling close to her in age, had hated her practically since birth.
She’d call me a liar if I said it out loud, but Sterling Sawyer was the loneliest person I knew, and I knew a lot about loneliness.
Uncle Edgar was far from perfect—as my current circumstances proved very well—but he’d taken care of me. He might not have been kind about it, but if I’d started to slide out of control as Sterling had, he would have yanked me into line. Sterling had no one who cared enough to save her from herself. Until now.
Griffen was pissed, but if he held any shred of the boy I’d known, he wouldn’t give up on his little sister. I refused to believe he had that in him.
The rest of the rooms were anticlimactic after Sterling’s. Only Braxton’s room showed any sign of current use. As the youngest siblings, Brax and Sterling had single bedrooms. Enormous bedrooms, at least twice as big as my apartment, but single rooms nonetheless.
The other Sawyers had small apartments, each complete with generous bedroom, bathroom, and sitting room. I’d grown up well off in Uncle Edgar’s home, thinking it was a palace compared to the pit he’d rescued me from. Heartstone Manor was something else entirely.
We continued on, making notes of any areas that needed extra attention, linens replaced, curtains repaired. Everything needed a thorough cleaning and a gallon of furniture polish, but otherwise, we didn’t find anything unexpected.
I was almost relaxing when we opened the door to what had been Griffen’s room. The entire space was completely empty, not a trace of Griffen left behind. No furniture, no carpet. Not even a curtain hung in the room. The wallpaper had dark squares showing where paintings and posters had hung, where furniture had been placed along the walls.
Griffen said nothing, his jaw clamped tight, eyes blank in an expression I was growing to hate. In a thin, tight voice, I asked, “Did you take your things with you when you left?”
Chapter Fifteen
Hope
I walked out with the clothes on my back and my driver’s license. Nothing else.”
We turned to Savannah, who looked back at us with an embarrassed flush on her cheeks. “I’m sorry. I forgot about this. I wasn’t here when it happened, but I think your father—” She swallowed hard, “I think the furniture was moved to the attic, and he had the rest thrown away. My mother might know more. I can ask,” she offered.
Griffen shook his head, shutting the door on the empty room. “Forget it. I don’t care, I left that life behind a long time ago.”
He could pretend he didn’t care, but it still had to sting. I made a note to see if Miss Martha knew where his things were. I doubted he cared about the furniture, but the rest—trophies and pictures and books—he had to want those back.
“Where to now?” Savannah asked. “Are you and Hope going to stay in your room? Do you want me to find furniture for it? I know there’s a stash of unused pieces up in the attics.”
“No,” Griffen said shortly and paced down the hall. We followed, waiting to see what he had in mind. He led us to the main hall at the top of the stairs, the dull floor of the entry hall far below.
Savannah gave the dusty chandelier a glance. “I’ll get on that once I deal with the bedrooms and the kitchen. I think there’s a crank in the attic to lower it.”
“I always wondered about that,” I murmured as Griffen turned the corner and threw open the double doors to the master suite.
Prentice Sawyer’s personal rooms had always been strictly off-limits, even to his children. While I’d run tame through much of this house as a young child, I’d never, ever been in here. What I saw had my breath catching in my throat.
This was a world unto itself. If the older Sawyer children had luxurious apartments, Prentice had a mini-palace all his own. The suite had a small foyer, with art deco black-and-white tiled floor and dark-red silk wallpaper, a table to the side with an empty crystal vase. Oil paintings hung on every wall, mostly of the mountains and rivers of Western North Carolina. A few of what I imagined were Sawyer ancestors.