then bagged the remaining items up. Some clothes and accessories were for donation, some things were for the dump, and others, like her jewelry, were to be split up among the brothers.
Hours had gone by without a single discovery of interest. No skeletons under the bed, no dark secrets hidden away in the underwear drawer. They’d checked the pocket of every coat and the contents of each old purse. Nothing but used tubes of lipstick and some faded receipts. All that was left was a collection of shoe boxes on the very top shelf of the closet.
Carson eyed the boxes with dismay. They were likely to find nothing but shoes in them. Most of the boxes seemed like fairly new acquisitions from her life after he and his brothers had made their fortune—Stuart Weitzman, Jimmy Choo, Christian Louboutin... But one box caught his eye. On the very top of the stack, in the far back corner, was a ratty old box with a faded and curling Hush Puppies label on it. There was no doubt that box had been around in his mother’s closet for a very long time. Maybe even thirty years or so...
“There’s a shoe box in the very back corner that looks promising,” Carson said. Looking around, he was annoyed to find that it was out of his reach even with his height and long arms. “How can my mother not own a stepladder or something? I guess I’ll run downstairs and get a chair.”
“No,” Georgia insisted. “I’m sure I can reach it. I just need you to give me a boost.”
Carson looked at her with concern. “A boost?”
“Yes, just make a step for me to put my foot in your hands and boost me up. I’ll be able to reach it.”
It would be just as easy to go get a chair, but he wasn’t going to argue with her. He wanted into that box as soon as possible. Crouching over, Carson laced his fingers together and made a steady perch for Georgia’s shoe.
“One, two, three,” she counted, hoisting herself up.
Carson held her up and patiently waited for news. “Can you reach it?”
“It’s just beyond me. Hold on. Wait... I’ve...almost...got it!” A moment later, it came tumbling off the top shelf along with several others. Georgia lost her balance and dropped from his hands, colliding with his chest.
“Whoa there,” he said, catching her before she could bounce off him and hit the floor. He’d instinctively wrapped his arms around her, holding her body tight against his own. The contact sent a surge of need through his veins, making him hyperaware of her breasts molded to his chest. Every muscle in his body tightened, his pulse quickening in his throat as he held her. “Are you okay?” he asked as he swallowed hard.
She looked up at him with momentarily dazed eyes. “Yeah... I mean yes. I wasn’t expecting it to all rain down at once.” She pressed gently but insistently against his chest. Carson relinquished his hold and she took a step back. He breathed in deeply to cool his arousal and tried to focus on their discovery instead.
Georgia looked down at the floor of the closet and the mess they’d made. There were several pairs of shoes scattered around the floor. The shoe box they’d sought out, the oldest one in the bunch with the peeling Hush Puppies label, had come open, too. As expected, there was not a thirty-year-old pair of shoes in it. Instead the paper contents had scattered everywhere, making the closet look as if a blizzard had struck.
They both crouched down and started sorting through the mess. Carson found a few pictures bundled together with a piece of twine. He untied them and sifted through the images. A couple were of him and his brothers when they were small. Things like Christmas morning and school pageants. There was one of his mother when she was very young, maybe even a teenager. After that were a few with his mother and some other people he didn’t recognize. He flipped the pictures over, but there was no writing on the back, no clue as to whether the other people were family or friends.
Setting them aside, he picked up some old newspaper clippings. Most of the pieces were about a missing girl named Amy Jo Turner. He scanned one of the articles looking for clues about his mother, but all it talked about was the circumstances surrounding the teenager’s disappearance and how the authorities presumed the worst. Her boat had been found drifting empty in a lake. A single shoe and the sweater she was last seen in had washed up a mile away about a week later.
The header was for a paper in Houston, Texas, and the dates were all in the early ’80s before Brooks and Graham were born. Their mother had never mentioned Houston, much less that she might have lived there at some point. Who was Amy Jo Turner? What did any of this have to do with his mother? It was important enough for her to keep the clippings for thirty years, but he didn’t understand why.
“Carson,” Georgia said, drawing his eye from the photos. “Look at this.”
He took a discolored envelope from her hand and unfolded the letter inside it. It was a handwritten letter addressed to his mother. Impatient, he skimmed through the words to the bottom where it was signed “Yours always, S.” Returning to the top, he read through it again, looking for clues to the identity of the writer that he might have missed the first time.
Dearest Cynthia,
You don’t know how hard it’s been to be away from you. I know that I’ve put myself in this position, and I can’t apologize enough. I seem to destroy everything that I love. You and the boys are probably better off without me. I hope that one day you can forgive me for what I’ve done to you. Know that no matter how much time has passed, my feelings for you will never fade. You have been, and always will be, the one true love of my life.
Yours always, S
That was totally and completely useless. All Carson got from it was an initial. He flipped over the envelope to look at the postmark. The date sent a sudden surge of adrenaline through him. It was a Chicago postmark dated seven months before he was born. That meant something. Could this lover, this “S,” actually be his father? Why couldn’t the man have written his name and made it easier on them all?
“What do you think?” Georgia asked tentatively after a few minutes.
Turning the letter over in his hand, Carson ran his gaze over the words one last time. “I think the person who wrote this letter is my father. It’s the biggest lead I’ve ever had and yet somehow, I don’t feel like I’m any closer to finding out his identity than I was before. What good is one initial?”
“It’s more than you had before,” she said in an upbeat tone.
Carson wasn’t feeling quite as optimistic. “Anything else interesting?” he asked.
Georgia shuffled through some more envelopes that were bound together with a rubber band. “These are old pay stubs. She’s kept them going back for years and years. Other than that, not much, sorry.”
Carson nodded and started putting everything back into the shoe box. “That’s okay. We found something. That should make my brothers happy. I’ll hand this over to them and let them analyze to their hearts’ content. Let’s pack up the last of these shoes and call it a day.”
They slowly gathered up all the bags and boxes and hauled them downstairs to the foyer. When he looked down at his watch, Carson realized he’d kept Georgia here far longer than he’d expected to. “Wow, it’s late. I’m sorry about that. I hijacked your whole Saturday.”
Georgia set down a bag of clothes and shrugged. “I would’ve spent it working anyway. I told you I’d help. I didn’t put a time limit on it.”
“Well,
