Page 97 of Soft Flannel Hank

“You didn’t ask,” she replied, sniffling. “Do you need anything from Nat’s before we go?”

“I should pack up some things. Food. My clothes. Make sure the wood stove is dead.”

“Of course,” Niamh replied. “Give me ten minutes, and I can drive you there.”

She stood from the couch and disappeared down the hallway again, leaving Hank alone. She returned with an old, leather weekender bag in her hands. Hank noticed that she’d changed into black jeans and boots and an oversized black sweater.

Hank reached for her bag, and she let him have it. Niamh redid the multiple locks on the front door and turned out the lights while Hank watched her glide around the space.

“This way,” she said, leading him out a side door and through the breezeway to where her luxury SUV was parked in the garage.

Hank put her bag in the trunk and climbed into the passenger side.

Niamh pulled out of her driveway, closing the garage with a button on the visor.

“You smell like a distillery,” she said with a sniff.

Hank grunted.

“Did you fall in?”

“You could say that?”

“Did you find what you were looking for at the bottom?”

“No.”

She nodded tightly and gripped the steering wheel.

Before long, she had parked in front of Nat’s cabin, and they went inside.

“You should shower,” she said.

“There’s no time,” Hank replied with more bite in his voice than he meant.

“If I am to spend six hours in a car with you, I’ll not do it with you smelling like you went for a swim in a copper still.”

Hank wanted to protest, but she held up a long-fingered hand. “I’ll pack the food and bank the stove. We’ll lose no time, Hank.”

He nodded tightly and stalked off to the bathroom.

The water was cold when he stepped into the shower stall, trying and failing to not think about two days before when Esther had slipped into the shower with him, how close she’d had to stand to fit, how he’d made the most of that closeness. He could almost remember the slippery feel of her skin against his as she writhed and squirmed against the cold wall.

Hank shook his head and shoved it under the shower spray.No more.

Esther had left. She’d stolen his truck and abandoned him. He could get back to World’s End. He could figure out what happened to Magda’s truck. But as sobriety and reality both settled heavily on Hank’s shoulders, as he rubbed his knuckles over his heart, across the dull, persistent ache that throbbed behind his ribs, he remembered that she’d also stolen something else that would not be so easy to get back.

* * *

Esther wason high alert as she pulled into World’s End. She couldn’t help but draw a connection between her feelings now and her feelings the first time she’d crossed into town. She’d been edgy and scared and frantic but also so, so tired that she’d felt numb. She felt much the same now.

It was mid-morning, and the diner parking lot was almost full as she passed it. Esther felt a deep longing in her guts. Just yesterday, Hank had told her about how the best meal at the diner was breakfast. He said he couldn’t wait to take her there the first morning they got back to town.

A part of her wanted to go. To sit in that back booth where her life had changed and eat a tall stack of pancakes so fluffy that the syrup nearly dissolved them. With every bite, she’d be thinking about how she’d be hungry again in exactly forty-five minutes when all the sugar wore off and she crashed, but it would be worth it. Buttermilk and vanilla and maple syrup and bitter, burnt diner coffee sweetened with white granulated sugar and cream that came in little foil-topped plastic cups. She wanted it. She wanted the comfort and familiarity of it.

But it was the dumbest thing she could do and so, with a sigh, she drove past the diner and continued to Hank’s.

By now, he’d be awake and have discovered she was gone. He’d probably think she stole the truck, which might betechnicallytrue. But Esther preferred to think she hadborrowedthe truck to get herself away from him and keep him safely where he was.