“Actually, I’m on my way out. I need to get to my dad’s house, pack up, and head back to the hospital.” She stepped out the door and pulled it closed behind her. When the lock clicked shut, her stomach dropped. The keys. She’d left the car keys inside. She turned and shook the handle. It was locked again. “Damn it,” she cursed under her breath, and rested her head against the door.
Travis came up right behind her, his body only inches from hers as he reached around and lightly swept her hand off the knob and gave it a turn. He still smelled faintly of his cologne and brought her back to the morning when he’d held her while she cried. He didn’t back away, even when she turned slightly in an attempt to get some space and instead their shoulders touched. That look came over him again, the one from when she’d first opened the door and the one from the hospital when she got the news about Amelia, a look of concern and something else that seemed like a desire to make it better.
“Maybe you should call your boyfriend,” he said, his breath tickling past her ear and ruffling her unkempt hair. She swallowed and tried to move away but instead bumped into the corner of the brick wall behind her.
“Uh, my phone is in the car and, anyway, he’s really tired and I probably should let him sleep.” She felt like she was rambling between the proximity, her worries that he’d smell the blood or the bleach on her, and how this close she was able to see that he had fine lines around the corners of his mouth that must come from having such a broad smile.
“I’ll take you to your dad’s house and the hospital. I have to go back there anyway.”
Though he’d let go of the doorknob, he was still standing close, and it was as distracting as it was intimidating. She could call Collin and have him come out and take her home, but then he’d still need to drop her off at the hospital and head back home to finish cleaning up the bathroom. Plus, she was sure that Travis would wait for Collin to show his face before he was willing to leave Ellie outside by herself at three thirty a.m. She didn’t have enough confidence in Collin’s ability to double-and triple-check his appearance before facing Travis’s practiced scrutiny.
“Yeah, I’ll go with you,” she said, making the decision at the same moment she said it out loud. “Let me grab my phone and we can go.”
Ellie looked at him directly. She’d read somewhere that when you felt guilty, it was hard to look authority in the eyes, so she thought it was a good bluff. But when their eyes met, Travis didn’t feel like an authority figure, and she forgot he was wearing a uniform. He didn’t step aside like she thought he would. He just stood there for a moment longer, connected by nothing more than their matched gaze. She swallowed slowly and licked her lips, suddenly aware of how dry they were. Both anxious to leave and desperate to put as much space as possible between Travis and Collin’s bathroom, Ellie put her hand on his shoulder and pushed him back lightly.
“Ready?” she asked simply, hoping he would finally let her go without some kind of interrogation. He blinked a few times and took a big step to the right, making plenty of room for Ellie to get through to the hedge-lined walkway and then back to the car. She walked as fast as she dared, grabbed her phone and the hospital bag with her belongings from the Jeep, slammed the car door, and looked around for Travis’s cruiser.
“It’s around the corner,” he said, making a good guess as to what she was looking for. Hands on his utility belt, he took one more glance at Collin’s door. When no one emerged from it, he tipped his head toward the dark street where she could make out the form of his car by the light of a lone streetlamp.
Ellie flung her bag over her shoulder and clasped the phone tight to her side as it buzzed. It was on Silent, but that was Collin’s vibration pattern. She slipped the phone into the loaner sweatshirt’s pocket, after declining the call. It was only a mile and a half to her dad’s house. She would turn it back on then, text Collin, explain the situation.
CHAPTER 24
AMELIA
Monday, April 25
Two weeks earlier
“Daddy, I know you don’t like it, but you have to eat something. If you don’t eat the meat, then I have to give you the protein drink, and I know you don’t like that nasty stuff.” Amelia sat in front of her father in her living room. His favorite spot when he came to her house was the recliner just in front of the TV. He’d watch any channel with sports, had come to love watching golf and fishing shows, and regularly forgot how to use the remote.
She usually tried to get her father to eat at the table with the family. There were still days that he was lucid enough to talk about his day and ask the kids if they were finishing their homework on time and a few other grandfather-y things, though his speech was slurred. The girls would always look at their mother with concern whenever their grandpa said anything to them directly, and Amelia would have to translate to the best of her ability.
Today she fed the kids first, since Steve was out late at a work site. It worked better, eating in shifts. Plus, there was always the added pressure of having Steve there, silently displeased with the current “Dad situation.”
“One more bite, Daddy.” Chief Brown gave her a look of displeasure that reminded her of Cora when she didn’t like the dinner she’d made and was swallowing it just to be nice and so she could be excused. “Then we can put on the news, and I’ll brush your hair,” she added.
That was always a good motivator. He used to love it when she would run his old horsehair brush through his hair, and when she was a child, he’d pay her a dime to retrieve the brush from his bathroom counter and play hairdresser. She later thought it was his effort to make up for the loss of her mom at such a young age or to give an example to Ellie of how to sit nicely when he was trying to do her hair. It was a silly little bonding activity that went by the wayside as the girls grew older.