LITMIR.BIZ

       Chapter 5

      “I’m sorry, Gabe. For ever thinking you’d quit your career for…anything less than something like that.”

      He glanced at her again. Her words had surprised him. Not as much as the fact that he’d told her what he just had, when he rarely spoke of it at all, but she’d still surprised him.

      “I would have thought you’d expect me to quit, if Hope demanded it.”

      Her mouth quirked. “There was a time when I suppose I might have,” she said. “I’m not particularly proud of that at the moment. Hope’s demands seem rather petty stacked up against the real reason you left.”

      That surprised him, too. Perhaps he’d gotten used to thinking Hope’s version of what a woman needed was the only one.

      “So how did Redstone happen, then?” Cara asked.

      He’d told her so much already, there didn’t seem to be any reason not to give her the rest. He kept his eyes on the road now that they were on the freeway, but his peripheral vision was as good as it had been in the navy, and he could see her fairly clearly.

      “Somebody he knew told Josh I’d quit, and why. He tracked me down. Offered me a job running his maritime division. I took it.” She saw one corner of his mouth curve up slightly. “Saved my life, after Hope.”

      He said it lightly, in an effort to negate the intensity of the past few minutes.

      “I should have been in touch more, then,” she said, as if she suspected there was more truth in the words than his tone admitted to. “I was so caught up in my own grief at the time I was afraid I’d break down sobbing every time, and I didn’t think you’d appreciate a weepy woman pestering you. Besides, I—”

      She stopped suddenly and looked down at her hands in her lap. He risked a glance then, and he saw that her cheeks were pink. He let a moment pass while he turned his focus back to the roadway.

      “You what?”

      “At the time, I’d never been in love, not really, so I didn’t really realize what it feels like to have the one person you love most ripped out of your life without warning.”

      “And now you do.”

      He said it softly, and it wasn’t a question.

      “Yes.”

      “Who was he, Cara?”

      “His name was Robert. He was a police officer. Killed in the line of duty, during an armed robbery. He got between the robber and a little girl.”

      She recited it as if it were a speech she’d memorized. He imagined it probably was; it was easier to answer the inevitable questions if you had an answer packaged and ready, one that you didn’t have to think about. He knew that from his own miserable experience.

      “I’m sorry. We lose too many good guys.”

      He meant it, and tried to let it show in his voice. When she looked at him, and gave him a smile he realized she didn’t think he could see, he knew she’d gotten it.

      “Yes, we do. And he was definitely one of them.”

      He let a moment pass, in silent tribute to a man he would never know, before he said quietly, “I wouldn’t have minded you calling, Cara. Even crying. Especially crying.”

      He glimpsed her sudden, startled look out of the corner of his eye, sensed her sudden stillness. And wondered what his wife had told her that had made her assume he would want nothing to do with someone because they were grief-stricken and expressing it in the most common way.

      He felt a little jab of guilt at the thought; Hope was gone, and the arrival of this much-delayed postcard didn’t change that. He shouldn’t be having negative thoughts about her. Hope hadn’t been perfect, he knew that, but he’d loved her, been captivated by her easy charm and vivacious beauty. And the fact that she had loved him had been flattering in a way, even if now he wasn’t sure exactly what she’d loved.

      “I wanted to,” she admitted. “Except for Hope’s parents, you were the only one I knew who was hurting as much as I was, but I didn’t want to make it worse for you.”

      The thought that she’d worried about that, even then, touched him, more deeply than he ever would have expected. Disconcerted, he seized on the first thing that came to mind.

      “We can’t tell them what we’re doing,” he said. “Gwen and Earl, I mean. It may—likely will—come to nothing.”

      “Of course we can’t. We have to do it, I couldn’t rest if we didn’t. But I wouldn’t raise their hopes for anything, when it’s all so…nebulous.”

      Her words stabbed at him, and his voice was tight when he spoke again. “It’s new ground in the search,” he admitted. “But you’re not thinking we’re going to find her up there, are you?”

      Cara blinked. “Hope? You mean…alive? God, no.”

      He breathed again; he’d always suspected little, shy Cara lived a great deal in her mind, and for a moment he’d feared she might have built some kind of fantasy in her head about finding her dearest friend alive and well.

      “In the beginning,” she said, in the tone of an embarrassed admission, “I wondered. I used to lie awake at night, picturing Hope living a new life somewhere, maybe with a new name, like she’d seen something and ended up in witness protection, maybe with amnesia, silly things like that.”

      It was so close to what he’d been worried she was thinking he was disconcerted all over again. Perhaps he’d known her better than he’d realized.

      “Not silly, under the circumstances,” he said, all the while glad she knew now the thoughts had been seriously implausible.

      “I know that, now. Grief does crazy things to you. Coupled with uncertainty, it’s almost unbearable.” She took in an audible breath. “That’s why I know we can’t say anything to Hope’s parents. It’s not that I’m expecting to find her, but if we could find out what happened to her, it might…not help, nothing can, but at least they’d know.”

      “Closure?”

      He hated the word; it made him think of people expect you to pick up and go on as if nothing had happened once the funeral was over, because you had closure. But now he was beginning to wonder. Cara had lost someone, too, and she’d clearly managed to get past it. Was the difference just that, that she’d had closure, where he was left forever wondering?

      She shrugged. “I’m not much for buzzwords like that, but there’s something to the theory, I think. Especially when it’s something like this, where you simply don’t know what happened. It’s too easy to slip over the edge and start clinging to thoughts like I had in the beginning, to slide into the madness of believing them.”

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