“Doyou want a ride to the hospital?”
Tate’s question took Cat by surprise. After last night, she’d been sure they were going to give each other a wide berth.
He didn’t seem angry or cold this morning. If anything, he’d asked the question gently, his expressive eyes soft and warm. This was the Tate she’d known before.
She hadn’t answered, but somehow she found herself in the passenger seat of his vehicle, heading towards the hospital.
Numb. That’s how she was feeling at the moment. Since she’d seen Tyler’s bloody body at the end of the driveway, she’d disassociated from the event to deal with her emotions and horror. In a way, this was all happening to someone else, and she was simply an observer, like she was watching a television show play out in front of her eyes.
So far, it had been working, but little by little, she was beginning to lose that objectivity. It was going to hit home at any moment, and she wasn’t sure she was ready to deal with it all.
“I’m planning to buy myself a car,” she heard herself saying, wanting to talk about something normal and boring. “I just haven’t had the chance yet. I didn’t need one in the city.”
“I’m sure it was easier not to have one,” Tate replied. “I’m sure being home is an adjustment after living in a big city for so long.”
“It is in some ways, but not in others. Some things are shockingly still the same. The town librarian is the same person. There’s construction on Valley Avenue. The pizza place still has that lunch special with two slices and a drink, although it’s fifty cents more than when I left.”
The town familiarity had been a balm to her soul now that she was back home. It was exactly what she’d needed when her world had changed so abruptly.
“Elaine Bender has been the town librarian since we were kids. She often gets asked when she will retire, and she says never. I believe her. As for Valley Avenue, they did finish their repaving project, but now they want to put a traffic light at the corner of Benson. There have been a few accidents when people turn left.”
Road construction seemed to take forever in Winslow Heights. Cat was unsure why, but projects were often measured in years, not weeks or months, if her mother was to be believed.
“And the pizza?”
“The owner, Hank, doesn’t like change,” Tate laughed. “His daughter had to twist his arm to get him to raise the price. But he would only do it fifty cents. She wanted a dollar.”
“A whole dollar? That’s highway robbery,” she joked.
“That’s pretty much what Hank said. He and the missus will spend a few months during the winter in Florida. I think his daughter plans to raise the price again while he’s gone.”
“He’s going to be mad.”
“Livid,” Tate agreed. “Listen, I wanted to apologize about last night. I acted like a jerk. I’m sorry about that.”
Cat hadn’t expected him to apologize. To be truthful, she hadn’t been blameless.
“I’m sorry, too,” she said. “In a way that it pains me to admit, I did want you to say that it was all okay. I have felt guilty, and I guess that I thought you could make that go away. I should have reached out, and I didn’t. That was wrong. I wish that I had. I’m not proud of the way that I’ve behaved. You weren’t out of line in pointing it out.”
“I’d had kind of a bad day, and I took it out on you. I didn’t plan to get into it with you.”
What had he planned? To avoid or ignore her? She wouldn’t blame him.
“But I brought it up.”
Because of the guilt.
“Well…yeah. I thought I’d put it behind me, but I guess - deep down - it still bothered me. But it was a long time ago.”
The way he said it… It didn’t sound like it had been a long time ago. At least, not to him.
“As someone who recently faced possibly losing my mother, I doubt it gets any easier as time goes on.”
Lily Winslow had been the heart and soul of the Winslow family. Her children had adored her, and she’d been close to all of them—a loving mother who truly wanted the best for all of her kids. Her disappearance must have left a Grand Canyon-sized hole in their hearts.
“It doesn’t,” Tate replied, his voice tight. “It’s the not knowing that’s the hardest part.”
“No information all of these years? Nothing at all?”
