Feeling as self-conscious as I’d ever been, I shut my eyes, slowed my breathing…and pushed the world and all its demands away. I could hear my heartbeat loud and strong in my ears, a rhythm that told me I was still alive, still had work on earth to do. That pulse said I mattered. Despite what anyone or anything had told me otherwise.
“Ernie?” I whispered, opening my eyes.
“Yes?”
“I’m going to see Buck. I’m not changing my mind.”
His chapped lips pursed together. “Okay, then. And Miller?”
“I’ll think about it on the drive.”
His snort was heavy on the disdain. “Sounds a little weak, but I will trust your process—and your decisions.”
I rose up on tiptoe and kissed the rough cheek of an even rougher man. “I love you.”
“Stop it.”
“I do.”
“I mean it.”
“I can’t help it.”
“Get out of here. Go on now.”
I walked backward to my SUV, grinning at the most unexpected counselor to ever walk bowlegged into a life. “When I get back, I’m gonna stock that candy drawer with all the Hershey’s candy bars you want.”
“See that you do,” he called.
I eased into the driver’s seat of my Toyota, clicked my seatbelt, ran the windshield wipers to dislodge an oak leaf, then adjusted my rearview mirror.
I needed to see where I was going.
But I prayed for an accurate assessment of where I’d been.
The phone on my console buzzed, the display reading Jerica Davenport, Department of Veterans Affairs.
I silenced the device, then tossed it onto the seat beside me.
Ernie was right.
It was past time to quiet the noise.
And see what I heard there.
Chapter Forty-Six
Buck’s room at the Magnolia Manor was empty.
Completely cleaned out except for a burger wrapper and an empty can of Coca-Cola.
At 6:15, the time I was supposed to pick him up for a steak dinner, I’d found the door ajar and the inn owner stooped over the bed, tugging off the linens.
“You missed him.” She straightened when she saw me, snapping a pillowcase into submission. “I think your dad left this afternoon.”
That familiar old sadness hit me, the kind that started in my heart and seeped all the way down like a poison. “I can’t say I’m surprised.”
“Do you know where he went?” she asked.
