Page 87 of Forever Dark
That made it worse.
“You and my dad might have hated me for leaving,” Selena said, voice kept low only by effort, “but I had to leave.Our marriage was over after the accident.It couldn’t be repaired.”
Connor turned his head then.“The hit-and-run wasn’t what killed our marriage.We didn’t try hard enough.”
“I did.”
“No,” he said, just as quietly.“You decided to leave because it was too hard.”
Her fingers curled against her knee.“Idecided?You could never tell me why you were in contact with that woman.”
Connor’s face changed, not much, but enough.The humor was gone.So was the softness that had crept in while he talked about her father.
“It didn’t matter what I said.You never believed me.”
Frustration flashed white-hot.“Because you never gave me a reason to.”
“I gave you one.You just didn’t like it.”
Selena looked away before the expression on his face could settle too deeply.Beyond the windshield the bus remained where it had been all night, mute and smug.
This was what happened.A small opening, one inch of old familiarity, and then the floor dropped out from under it.No matter how carefully she stepped, the same ground kept giving way.
“Let’s just do our job,” she said.
“Fine.”
The answer came clipped.
After that, silence returned and this time it had weight.
Connor sat with both hands loose on the wheel, eyes on the fairgrounds.Selena kept hers on the bus and tried to ignore everything else in the car.The warmth of his presence.The memory of his voice when he said her father’s name.The old anger now freshened and awake beside her like something that had never really slept.
Out beyond the trees, Leon stepped down from the bus and lit another cigarette.Smoke drifted pale in the floodlight.Nothing else moved.
Selena took another sip of coffee gone lukewarm and wished she had stayed in the woods.
Worse than that, she wished she had never gotten into that car.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
By the time Tara Brennan stepped out of County General, the hospital had worked itself into her bones.
The cold lighting had a way of doing that.Twelve hours under it left her feeling used up and flimsy, as if one more question from a patient or one more call light from a room at the end of the hall might have finished her off completely.The parking lot beyond the sliding doors was thinly lit and mostly empty, rows of cars sitting under sodium lamps that buzzed faintly in the dark.
A security guard in a windbreaker stood near the entrance with a paper cup in one hand.
“Night, Tara,” he said.
“Morning, technically,” she replied.
That got a tired smile from him.“Get home safe.”
The words caught more than they should have.
Tara adjusted the strap of her bag and kept walking.Tired rubber soles padded on the pavement.Her feet ached.One shoulder ached, too, from leaning over beds all night.A smear of something dark marked the side of her scrub top near the hem.Coffee maybe.Maybe worse.She looked at it once, then let it go.At home there were leftovers in the fridge, a shower, and a bed with clean sheets if she had the energy to pull the blanket back far enough to get into it.
On the way to her car, she fished her keys from her bag and found the folded revival flyer wedged beside them.
