Lucas and Nate are going to take one look at me and know something’s wrong. I need to be calm. Casual. Totally fine.
I check my reflection in the rearview mirror.
I don’t look calm. I look like a man who just saw a ghost.
“Get it together, Holt,” I mutter, and head inside.
The kitchen smellslike the pasta Lucas made for dinner. He stress-cooks, which means something already tipped him off that today was going to be a day.
Nate’s at the table with his reading glasses on, case file spread in front of him, pen tapping against the wood.
They both look up when I walk in.
I last about three seconds under their combined scrutiny.
“Cara’s back,” I say, because apparently my mouth has decided to skip the preamble.
The kitchen goes dead silent.
Lucas’s hand freezes on the spoon he was holding. Something flickers across his face, shock, then something raw he quickly tries to smooth over, before the spoon clatters against the pot.
Nate doesn’t move. Doesn’t blink. But I watch the color drain from his face, watch his knuckles go white around the pen he’s holding.
For a long moment, nobody speaks.
“Back,” Nate finally says. His voice is flat. Careful. “As in?—”
“In town. Staying at Eileen’s. I just saw her.” I move to the fridge because I need something to do with my hands. “I was dropping off the casserole dish and she was standing in the upstairs window.”
Lucas turns off the stove. His movements are too controlled. Too deliberate. “Did you talk to her?”
“No.” I grab a beer, crack it open, take a long pull. “I nodded at her and left.”
More silence.
“You nodded,” Lucas says slowly.
“Yep. Panicked. Nodded. Left.” I slump into a chair at the table.
Nobody says anything for a long moment. The weight of it settles over the kitchen like the snow outside.
Lucas abandons the stove entirely and sits down across from me. He’s trying to look calm, analytical. The doctor face he wears at work. But his jaw is tight and there’s a tension in his shoulders that wasn’t there a minute ago.
“She put her hand on the glass,” I say quietly. “When she saw me. She put her hand on the glass like?—”
I stop. I don’t know how to finish that sentence.
“How are we doing with this?” Lucas asks. Nothow are you doing. How arewe. Because this isn’t just about me. “Actually?”
Nobody answers right away.
I look at Nate. He’s staring at the table, jaw tight, that unreadable expression locked down. But I’ve known him long enough to see underneath it. He’s not unreadable to me.
He’s devastated.
“Nate?”
He’s quiet for a long moment. Then: “Forty-seven times.”
