“Probably Christmas decorations.” A wave of sadness swept over Stevie. She wished that she had put up a tree this past holiday. Maybe some of what was in the boxes would have been saved if they’d been on the tree instead of packed away.

“If we all take a load, we should be able to get the rest of this pretty quick,” Mia said.

Cody and Jesse went to the closet, and each gathered up an armload of clothing. Mia reached up and took down as many shoe boxes as she could carry. Stevie threw the garbage bag full of things over her shoulder and took them out to her mother’s car. Once she had put it in the back seat, she crawled in beside the bag and just sat there.

In a few minutes, Cody got in beside her, draped an arm around her, and pulled her closer to him. “I promise all our dates won’t end like this one.”

“If the second one does, there won’t be a third,” she said.

It’s time to move on and make a fresh start. You’ve been looking for closure, and here it is, the voice in her head said. The boxes that she had kept all her journals and keepsakes in were soaked, and everything was completely ruined.

Back at the bunkhouse, she sat down on the edge of the bed and stared at the closed closet door. Cody had moved everything he owned out to the storage room in the main part of the house. Jesse had found a spare chest of drawers in storage and put it in there for Cody’s personal things. Next week, they would rescue the rest of what was salvageable from the house and store it in the barn.

But right then, the entire impact of losing her home hit her.

“It would have been better if a tornado had simply taken it all in one fell swoop instead of having to face the destruction a flood can do to a house,” she muttered.

Cody crossed the room and sat down beside her. “The insurance adjustor will be there tomorrow, and we can go back through the place again, once everything is dried out, and see if there’s anything else worth saving. At least your mother’s car started up, and you’ve got something to drive until Monday when the guy comes to fix your van.”