Sorrow (Cape Frost #1)

12

My throat feels raw as I follow Boo out of the cruiser and onto our old property. I blame Hayes and his incessant need for violence, but I also blame all the crying I did in the shower this morning.

That part wasn’t Hayes’ fault for once. It was me getting my emotions out of my system before coming here. I have to be as strong as my brother.

“Yeah, this’ll be fun,” he grunts, yanking down the plywood they slapped up where our front door used to be. Part of the singed frame comes with it, making me flinch.

This house wasn’t much, but it was home. It was the last place I saw my parents, the last place my family was whole. It was the only place I ever truly belonged... and now it’s ash. Ash and dust and nothing but a memory .

“Come on. Watch where you step, I don’t know how solid this floor is anymore. Just fan out and see if you can find anything worth saving.”

I don’t answer him with anything more than a quick nod. The words feel too thick to say. But with each step I take through the first hallway and into the decimated kitchen, flashbacks of my childhood interrupt the terrible view in front of me.

Dad, making french toast every day during the summer we had chickens. The coyotes made quick work of them, but we ate like royalty for almost two months.

Mom, teaching me how to cook and clean. Even she knew that my best shot at getting out of here was pleasing a man, she just went about it the wrong way.

Boo, laying on the living room floor and making me fly like an airplane anytime I was sad. He also used to practice wrestling moves on me in the same spot, but even those prepared me for things he wasn’t expecting.

All over this house, there are traces of me. Traces of them. Traces of the kind of love I haven’t felt in almost a decade.

Now, all I see is snow-covered, dripping wet, absolutely scorched destruction .

So maybe our dishes are cracked from the heat of the flames and our appliances will never run again. Maybe my clothes are damp and smell like heartbreak and my books are incinerated. So what if the couch is reduced to coils and the roof has a hole in it the size of the moon, letting all that snow in. None of that shit matters to me.

It’s the memories and the security of having a soft place to land that I’ll miss the most.

Well... and Rocky, too.

Rocky .

Rocks don’t burn.

With the first flicker of hope I’ve felt in weeks, I rush back to my room and dig through the cotton candy insulation, wood planks, burned blankets and sopping wet clothes. Every pile of rubbish I look through results in nothing, but that just means I’m getting closer. I know it has to be here.

I’m just not looking hard enough.

After ten minutes, I’m so cold I can’t feel my fingertips and almost every inch of my body is soaking wet. Half of the things in here are frozen solid and so heavy I can barely move them, so I break down and yell for my brother to come help me — but despite the pitying look he throws my way when I tell him what I’m doing, he doesn’t have any more luck than I did.

Wherever Rocky is, he isn’t here. Or if he is, he’s buried so deep under the rubble that it would take a miracle to find him.

Cursed girls don’t get miracles.

As my nose burns with the threat of tears, Boo pulls me into a tight hug. “I’m sorry, Sammy. I am. I’ll look again when they come to clean it all out, okay? I promise.”

It’s an empty promise, but one I appreciate nonetheless. He’ll have more important things to do that day, and what kind of grown man is going to ask a group of other grown men to find his equally grown sister’s pet rock?

It’s not going to happen.

“Thanks, Boo. Did you find anything?”

Stepping back, he gestures to a box behind us as he shakes his head. “Not really. A couple of jackets from the back closet that seem to be okay. I think the door being shut made a difference, but there wasn’t much else in there besides our birth certificates and shit. Those were in a fireproof safe.”

Two generations of life reduced to a couple of jackets, a box full of paperwork, and the singular photograph Hayes pulled out the night it happened. I think I’d cry again if I didn’t feel so... hollow. Maybe numb is a better word, though that feels literal right now. The cold seeping into my bones rivals what I felt that night.

“Can we go?” I ask gently. “There’s nothing for us here.”

“Yeah. Take that box back to the cruiser and I’ll get the plywood put back up.”

It seems like such a stupid gesture since there’s nothing in here worth salvaging, let alone stealing, and that’s setting aside the gaping hole in the roof. If someone really wanted in, they’d get in.

I just want out .

Skirting around him, I take one last look at the remains of my room, grab the box, and leave my house for the final time.

I just wish I wasn’t leaving a piece of myself behind in the ashes.