“I’m not trying to make Colie’s life—or your own, for that matter—any harder,” Principal Willard said. “I’m trying to make this transition easier. For both of you.”
Resignation settled over her, a heavy shroud she couldn’t shake for the rest of the conversation. Within minutes, she was standing and shaking his hand. Reaching for her purse and forcing the closest thing she had to a smile as she left his office and approached Colie.
The halls of the school were silent as they walked, save the muted voices of teachers and students drifting from each classroom door they passed. Somewhere a locker door slammed. Colie didn’t say a word as their footsteps echoed on the hard floor, nor as they emerged into the afternoon sunlight.
Jenessa waited until they’d reached the car and Colie was buckled in to face the girl. “Hey.”
Colie didn’t respond, only leaned her arm on the door, chin in her fist.
“So volleyball, huh?”
Nothing. Maybe it’d be better to get straight to it.
“How do you feel about waiting a couple of days to start school? Maybe Thursday or even Friday? Principal Willard says it’s okay, and it’d give you a little time to get settled in at the house.”
At least she got a shrug at that.
“There’s one thing, though. Principal Willard . . . he, uh, he thinks you’d be happier this year in sixth grade.”
Colie dropped her arm. “What?”
“You missed quite a bit of school at the end of the year last spring.”
Colie actually looked her straight in the eye. “Yeah, my mom was sick.”
It was as if she’d hurled a piercing arrow toward Jen. One that turned around in midair and pointed straight back at the girl. Because, oh, the torment she saw in Colie’s eyes. The mix of anger and dismay.
“I’m sorry, Colie. I’m so—”
Colie shoved herself out the passenger door. Jen cut the engine and hurried out after her. “Colie, please—”
The girl whirled around on the sidewalk. “It doesn’t matter anyway. I’m not staying here long. We’ll leave eventually.”
Where exactly did she think they’d go? “I know this is hard. But please . . . let’s try to talk this out. In the car. School’s going to let out soon and this parking lot will be a zoo.”
“Whatever.” Colie budged past her, moving once again in the direction of the car.
“Colie—”
“I said, whatever.” She slammed the door and sank into her seat.
Leaving Jen to round the car, heart sinking.
8
The beads of hot water soaking his hair and pummeling his skin might slick away the grime of this day, but they couldn’t come close to warding off Lucas’s exhaustion.
He stood in the shower, eyes closed, forcing himself not to lean against a tiled wall lest he nod off right here and now. It wasn’t just the work, the hours spent hacking up that tree and hauling logs and limbs in the wheelbarrow. It was last night’s less-than-restful sleep due to the hard floor—he must’ve gone soft from months on that comfortable mattress at the B&B.
It was concern over the fact that he never had been able to find Noah today, and he was legit beginning to wonder if he’d ever get his truck back.
It was that conversation with Sam. He couldn’t decide which rankled him most. Sam having picked up on his plans to leave and his lies about Mexico.
Or his friend’s complete lack of faith in him.
He turned off the water and shoved the shower curtain aside, reaching for a towel. Humidity thickened the air in the cottage’s small bathroom and clouded the medicine cabinet mirror. Towel wrapped around his waist, he scrubbed a circle into the mirror and spared himself a brief glance. Should he take the time to shave?
His focus roamed lower—to the pinched skin of his arms. The burn marks started on his wrists and climbed all the way past both elbows, darker and more mottled in some spots than others, but an eyesore all the same.
Wasn’t so much the sight of them that bothered him. He wasn’t vain, and anyway it was easy enough to cover them.
It was the memories they induced. The sensations they still managed to resurrect even all these years later. The smell of burning flesh—not all his own. The weight of the body he’d carried through the village. The anguished cries of the child’s mother . . .
His own yells when he’d awakened from the darkness later. The searing pain.
Stop.
He whirled away from the mirror, bent to swipe his discarded clothing from the floor, then ducked his head out the bathroom door. One of Noah’s shirts was slung over the old couch in the middle of the living room and from here he could see the guy’s duffel through an open bedroom door.
Noah might not have returned to the cottage, but he hadn’t left entirely. That, at least, was something. But just how long was he supposed to hang around waiting for Noah to return? And why—why?—had Flagg thought this was a good idea?
On a whim, he snatched his cell phone from the kitchenette counter as he padded to the back bedroom, leaving wet prints on the wood planks underfoot. A voice answered on the second ring.
But not the voice he expected. “Hey, Danby.”
“Uh, hey, Court. Why’re you answering Doug’s phone?”
“Doug’s dealing with a burnt pizza situation. We’re all at his place. Pizza. Football. You know the drill.”
Right, because when the Bridgewell Elite team was stateside, Mondays were training days at the gym. Which meant during the NFL season, no one ever got home in time for whatever game was airing that night. They’d made a habit of gathering on Tuesday evenings and watching a recorded game.
He could picture them now in Doug’s apartment—as sparse as the rest of the group’s. Courtney with her cropped hair, usually in track pants and a Cowboys tee. She hadn’t lived in Texas in almost twenty years, but she remained loyal to her home team. Doug, Jamar, and Kelvin would be there, too. Mariana was the only married member of the elite team, so she didn’t always join in the after-hours gatherings.
“Everyone misses you, by the way.”
Had she taken extra care to emphasize the everyone or was that just wishful thinking on his part? Surely after this many months of distance, the feelings she’d expressed last spring had dissipated some, right?
“Believe me, I thought I’d be back by now. But Flagg has me on an impossible mission at the moment.”
“Right. The kid from Boston.”
“Wow, you know where he’s from? That’s more than I’ve gotten out of him. You meet him or something?”
“No, but Flagg mentioned him.”
He grabbed his last pair of clean jeans from his open suitcase. Should he ask Jen about using her washer and dryer at some point? Or maybe he could bring a load over to Kit’s—like a college student lugging dirty laundry home.
Just another reminder that his life didn’t look anything like that of other thirty-three-year-olds. The closest thing he had to a landing spot was his own boxy apartment back in D.C. But it’d never felt as homey as his room at the B&B. It never beckoned him back the way Maple Valley did.
He put his phone on speaker and laid it on the sole piece of furniture in the room—a rickety end table with one leg superglued together. “I wish he’d talked to me a little more about him. I can’t get a word out of the guy. I thought I had a good idea for working together. Thought it might give us a chance to talk or connect or something, but now he’s AWOL.” He reached for a clean t-shirt and pulled it over his head.