Page 101 of The Paradise Plan

She’d never given Harrison a tour, but she did now.She took him down the hall and said, “This was Conrad’s bedroom.The girls wanted the basement, and after they moved out, Conrad didn’t feel the urge to move.”This room still held boxes, but she continued on.“This was West’s office.”

Only his desk remained, as the couple had requested it to stay with the house.Apparently, the woman worked from home, and she’d loved the office with the big window looking into the front yard—and that desk.

Cass walked over to it and placed her palm against the top of it.She could almost feel West’s presence when she did that, and she closed her eyes.

She breathed in, seeing him sitting at this desk in the morning and evening.He was organized and deliberate, and going through his office had been easy.

“He was such a great investigator,” she whispered.Her mother’s arm came around her shoulders, and Cass let her eyes burn with tears.She wiped them away and looked at her mom.“I’m not sad.”

“I know.”Momma nodded, her own expression soft and tense at the same time.“Sometimes happy memories are laced with tears.That’s all.”

Cass nodded and turned to leave the office.“The master suite,” she said.The room was huge, as she’d had a reading nook in here, complete with a loveseat and a recliner, which had once stood sentinel around the window and a couple of bookcases.

She and West had had individual dressers, bathroom sinks, and sides of the massive master closet.A king bed would fit easily, and once, during a Texas hurricane, all five of them had crowded into this room to survive the night.

She told the story quickly, and then walked back down the hall.It wasn’t as hard to turn her back on everything that had happened here in this house as it had been when she and Conrad had packed the truck and driven to South Carolina.

She knew why, and that was because she was confident in her choice.There was no coming back and deciding later.Not this time.

She skipped the tour of the basement, which was just more bedrooms, bathrooms, paint and wallpaper she’d picked out, and empty space.

With the four of them, getting the half-dozen boxes out of the house took minutes.She ran the vacuum in the bedroom where they’d been, and that was it.

Her parents left the house, and Harrison waited for her by that widened front doorframe.

She tucked the vacuum into the closet and faced him.She smiled, and then she turned in a full circle, drinking in this place one last time.

She breathed in and out, feeling pure peace and contentment fill her with her next lungful of oxygen.

She pushed all the air out and met Harrison’s eye again.“Ready.”She crossed to him and let him wrap her into his arms.“Thank you for coming with me to do this.”

“I wouldn’t be anywhere else,” he whispered.When they separated, they smiled at one another, and Cass took his hand and led him out of the house.

She locked the door behind him and feeling lighter than she had in twenty months, she practically skipped down the front steps.

“Lunch?”her father yelled, and Cass nodded.

“Yes,” she said to him.“We’ll follow you.”She got back in the passenger seat, buckled her seatbelt, and waited for Harrison to back out of the driveway.

She kept her eyes on the house as he did, but when he drove away, she didn’t look back.

She wasn’t doing that anymore.Her future lay in front of her, with the man driving at her side, and she wanted to be present for anything that came their way.