Joanna made her way slowly down the lengthy corridor. Most of the rooms were packed with furniture, and by the amount of the dust covering everything, it had been there for decades. Boxes of odds and ends long since forgotten were also stacked here and there, but knowing the wing had been used for storage, Joanna paid it no mind. She was more interested in the little touches that weren’t there.

The windows had no drapes to block the sun and the floors, no rugs to warm one’s feet. One quick look at the lighting fixtures above her head proved their dimness wasn’t due to burned-out bulbs, but rather the lack of them as their sockets were empty. There was no artwork on the walls or shades on the crooked sconces, and the plaster was in far worse shape than anywhere else in the house. A chill ran down Joanna’s spine, and she leaned her head to the side. Why was it so much colder in here? She knew, at times, the east wing could be drafty, but this wasn’t a draft. It was a breeze.

The mass of tables, chairs, and accent pieces stuffed into the rooms prevented Joanna from easily entering any of them, but when she reached the end of the hallway and opened the last door on the right, sadness swept over her.

The room had been left untouched, and Joanna knew in an instant this was where Addison lived as a child. The bed was small, barely large enough to hold one person and the armoire, while providing a place to hang clothes, offered nothing else for the mirrors on the doors were cracked or shattered. Again, there were no curtains or carpets, but there was another piece of furniture in the room, and it drew Joanna to it like a magnet to steel.

With four legs, one drawer for pencils, and a surface on which to write, it was the simplest of desks, and absentmindedly Joanna ran her finger across the top leaving behind a track in the dust. She looked around the barren room again, trying to imagine a child living within its walls and tears sprung to her eyes. There was no love here. No hope or promise of the future amidst the gray and the brown and the bleak. There was only sadness and despair, invisible stifling blankets that had smothered a child’s need for love, or worse yet, the ability to open her heart and let her love out.

Joanna took a ragged breath, choking back the tears and shaking her head at the inhumanity of a parent who didn’t deserve that title. Without so much as another glance at her surroundings, Joanna went back to her room and picked up her mobile, and after placing a call to Samson and Lucinda, she pulled the corporate card from her nightstand drawer...and then began to make a list.

***