She smiled, but she was pale, her pupils still too big. “They’ll be at your place tonight. I feel so bad cancelling on her.”

“Was she mad?”

“No. Not at all.”

“Problem solved. Now as to the second thing. You’re going to move in with me at least until this whole mess is figured out.”

She nodded. “All right. Thank you.”

When she didn’t argue, he truly got how frightened she was. Which made him so angry he had to breathe through his nose several times until he’d gotten himself back under control. “You’re not going to argue with me?”

“Hell no. I’m freaked out. In all the time I’ve been an attorney, I’ve never had anything like this happen to me. This is scary and awful and I hate it.”

“I’m not going to let anything happen to you. You’re going to be with me at my house. Spike will be happy to have you so he can ride around on your shoulder all day long.”

“He prefers it when I simply accept that he’s in charge.”

He laughed, kissing her.

“All right, let’s make a list. I always feel better when I make lists.” She pulled a pad from her bag. “I have multiple copies of all this paperwork. The originals are at my office right now as well. This wasn’t all my furniture anyway. I have a storage unit where ninety percent of it is until I buy a house. My bed is destroyed, which sucks because it took me forever to find just exactly the one I wanted.”

“It wasn’t destroyed. You could salvage it.”

She looked at him and her eyes brimmed with tears. “I can’t. Someone came in here. Came into my house and touched my things. My underwear! My books and my pictures. I don’t even want to think about what makes up that mess all over my clothes in the bathtub.”

He ached for her. This wasn’t something he could really make better.

“All right. How about we go get some rubber gloves and garbage bags? We’ll throw the clothes away if you like.”

“I don’t know about the ones in the tub. I just…” She looked at them with a shudder. “Yeah, no I can’t. I’ll always wonder so it needs to go. I have a bunch of stuff that I took to the cleaner on Wednesday. I’ll need to grab some underwear and stuff. I’ll order them online from my favorite place back in Seattle. They won’t arrive until the end of the week or so, but I’ve got enough for now at your place. Is it all right if I use your washer and dryer?”

“Baby, I want you to know you’re welcome to use anything and everything I have.”

She nodded again. “Yes, let’s get bags and then we can have throw-away bags, closer-examination bags and keep bags.”

They locked up and headed down the street to the hardware store to grab gloves and bags. It was pretty clear the story about the fight the night before at the Pumphouse had spread around town. They received some dirty looks here and there. A thumbs-up several times. Most of it though was just sort of general nosiness and staring.

When they returned after stopping at the Honey Bear and getting some provisions since they hadn’t eaten in hours, they began to do what they could to set things to rights again. The throw-away pile was larger than the keep pile. He ran loads down to her car and his truck, packing things that they could keep.

At the end he handed her a pile of photographs. “This is everything. I think many of them can be saved. I know someone who can touch them up, clean up some of them. Others have been ripped.”

She’d had three photo albums. One had been thrown in a sink full of water, but the other two had just been spilled all over the ground with the others.

She looked through the stack of pictures. Some of them she had duplicates for at her office. All the important ones were in Atlanta at a shop that was making albums for her siblings.

“Looks like several of the ones with the worst damage are of my mother like Shane had thought.” Which was creepy. Ugh. Caroline looked through again and once more. “This is everything you say?” she asked Royal.

“Yes. I mean there were some that were torn, but in large pieces so you could tell which went where. Why? What’s wrong?”

“There are two photographs missing. One of my mom taken about a year before she was killed. We’d been on a camping trip in Tennessee. The other is one taken when I was camping with my aunt, uncle and cousins. My aunt had it framed for me as a gift because I looked so much like my mom. Her hair had been up in a cap and mine was in a bandana.”

“You need to call Shane right now with this.”

She agreed, calling the number he’d given them before he’d left.

Four hours later they’d done their best, and she was worn thin and needed a shower and a drink and to be away from there. She didn’t say anything out loud, but once all this was handled, she was going to find a new place. She couldn’t stay there. Not after the break-in. It didn’t feel safe or secure. It didn’t even feel like it was hers.

“My grandmother has called and left four messages.” She looked at her phone and tucked it back into her pants.

“We’re going to drive back to my place where you’re going to soak in my tub while I make us a drink and come join you. Don’t call her. Not without me around.”

“I’ve been talking to that woman for thirty-one years now.”

“Yeah and it cuts you up every time. You’re cut up enough for one day. Let me be there to give you some support when you talk to her.”