The un-iced cake still lay on its plate. Browned wedges of lemons and limes filled serving bowls and dirty drink glasses. Uneaten hors d’oeuvres lay scattered on serving trays. Curling veggies and congealed dip sat on a party tray, and in one side of the sink, a large ceramic pot was filled with the rotting, marinated chicken that had never been cooked.

He hadn’t touched any of it. If anything, he had added to the mess by throwing dirty, food-crusted plates into the other side of the sink.

He could have done nothing, and the cleaning service would have come on Wednesday and taken care of everything. Instead, he must have canceled the service and left the mess for her to face.

“You petty son of a bitch,” she muttered.

Anger clenched her muscles. Moving quickly, she walked through the rest of the house. His office was bare, all the furniture gone.

There were other spots of nastiness. The master suite was a mess. He had left drawers pulled out and hangers strewn on the floor. A sour smell rose from the dirty, unmade bed. In the bathroom, bottles of her shampoo and conditioner were opened and dumped upside down in the sink where the liquids had hardened and congealed.

She jogged downstairs again to check the area where they had hung a collage of family photos.

The wall was empty. Every good photo she’d had of her father. They were all gone.

Furious and hurting, she rushed outside. The garbage was picked up on Thursdays. He might have just thrown the photos away. They might still be in the trash bins in the nook by the side of the garage.

When she reached the big, black bins, she threw back the hinged lids on both the recycling and the garbage bins. They were empty.

A sob tried to bubble up. Wiping at her face with the back of one hand, she bit it back.

She had hung the best photos, but there was still one last chance to find something from her father. Otherwise, she would have to go back to her mother and endure more recriminations and emotional blackmail.

She kept mementos in large plastic tubs in the basement. If Austin’s spite hadn’t driven him to destroy things down there, there were a few photos, things that were too damaged or deemed too goofy to hang on the wall. Slamming the lids down, she jogged back through the house and down the basement stairs.

She had tucked the storage containers high on a shelf underneath the stairs to protect them from potential flooding. As she looked into the shadowed niche, the bins were still in place. Hardly daring to hope, she pulled them out and opened them.