Page 16 of Forever Dark
That was part of the problem.He had that midlife desperation hanging on his shoulders, where people waste their time looking more back than forward until they realize time is short.Selena had just turned forty, but that sense of bittersweet nostalgia was something she wanted to avoid at all cost.And she’d been doing a good job of it for fifteen years until she was sent home.Now she had to face what was out there.
Outside, the morning had a pale, washed look.Clouds hung low over the hills, and the motel parking lot still held last night’s dampness in dark patches across the asphalt.Selena took a breath, locked the room behind her, and headed to the rental car.The air smelled of woodsmoke somewhere nearby.
Eric stood in the doorway of the lobby and lifted a hand as she drove off.
Selena gave a brief wave and kept going.
Elmsview looked smaller than she remembered in daylight.
That happened to every place people left young and returned to older.Roads narrowed.Buildings dipped closer to the ground.Corners once full of mystery turned into places that sold feed or insurance, swallowed up by the mundane.
Still, the town held itself together better than she might have expected.
Old storefronts lined the main drag in red brick and faded paint.Davy’s hardware store still stood beside a pharmacy that had somehow survived the chain stores out on the highway.The park near the church sat empty this early, swings hanging still, their seats dark with dew.Selena used to sit on those swings in the evening as a teenager, sneaking a drink there when her best friend, Jessie, managed to swipe something from her dad’s liquor cabinet.They’d talk about leaving the town, shaking the dust of the place off their feet and having adventures together.Those adventures never came.Selena left and Jessie stayed.That was how life went sometimes.
At the far end of Main Street stood the cinema.
Or what was left of it.
The red and gold marquee was blank now.One cracked letter clung stubbornly to the board.Posters no longer filled the front cases.Plywood covered one of the glass doors, and weeds had pushed up through the edge of the sidewalk out front.
Selena slowed without meaning to.
She and Connor had gone there countless times as teenagers.Cheap horror movies.Action films they both pretended were better than they were.Saturday matinees when summer heat made the inside of the theater feel like a refuge.Later, when they were married and money had been tight, they still went sometimes because two tickets and stale popcorn counted as a night out.It was a simple time.Before the suspicions.Before the crash.Before it all went bad.
Now the place looked like a memory no one had wanted badly enough to save.The sight of it filled her with sadness.
Elmsview had always been quaint in its own rough way.Front porches.Flower boxes.Shopkeepers who knew everyone’s name.But the town wore strain now, too.Paint that had gone too long without refreshing.Rooflines needing work.Empty windows where businesses had folded.The slow settling wear of places money passed through without staying.
Selena turned off Main Street and headed toward the sheriff’s department.
In the last fifteen years, Selena had built a reputation for being no-nonsense.For being tough.It was a lie.A fabrication to make her fit the mold the higher-ups needed.But when she saw the sheriff’s department come into view, that’s when her nerves kicked in.A tightening in her stomach as the building came into sight.Low brick structure.County flag out front.Two patrol SUVs parked side by side.Familiar and unfamiliar at once.But it was who was inside that caused her discomfort.
She cut the engine and sat for a moment.
Then she got out and reached the front doors.
Inside, the sheriff’s department smelled of coffee, copier toner, and old linoleum.Phones rang somewhere deeper in the building.A deputy passed carrying a file box and gave her a curious glance that lasted half a second too long.
At the front desk sat a woman in her early thirties with bleached blond curls pinned back from her face and enough makeup to make it clear she enjoyed the ritual of putting it on, and what people thought of her.
She looked up as Selena approached.
“Can I help you?”
“Good morning.I’m Selena Raven with the FBI.My office called ahead.”
Recognition flickered there.Fast, then hidden beneath something else Selena couldn’t quite pin down.
The woman stood.“Of course.I’m Cheryl Tate.”
Selena offered her hand.“Nice to meet you.”
Cheryl shook it, her grip cool and firm.“Sheriff Chase is expecting you.”
Her smile was present enough to qualify as polite, but there was distance in it.Not open hostility.Not even dislike, necessarily.More like caution dressed as professionalism.Selena got the feeling they knewexactlywho she was at the sheriff’s department.
Cheryl stepped out from behind the desk.“I’ll take you back.”
