“Daddy, we gotta go…the parade’s starting! Love you!” Matty said in a rush and then he was climbing off the bed. The video switched to Ronan and despite his ridiculous get up, his face was somber.
“You guys be careful.”
“We will,” Hawke said firmly. Ronan stared at the screen for just a moment before nodding.
“Call us tonight.”
And with that, the call ended and Hawke handed me the phone. He straightened in his seat and started the truck. But instead of putting the car in gear, he just sat there. He didn’t look at me when he said, “Thank you, Tate.” Then he put the car into drive and that was it.
We didn’t speak again until we passed the sign welcoming us to Lulling.
Chapter 13
HAWKE
The anticipationI should have felt as we rolled into Lulling was surprisingly non-existent and I knew why. Because of the man sitting next to me. Because of the feelings he’d started to stir in me.
And with those feelings came a bone-deep fear that I hadn’t felt in ten years. Not since those final moments as I’d carried Revay through the smoke and flames of what was left of our house and I’d known I wouldn’t be able to make it to the front door. But back then there’d been half a dozen firemen who had been able to pull us out of the wall of flames. The only thing that stood between Tate and whether or not he would get to go home to his son was me. It was a burden I wasn’t sure I could carry…or that I even wanted to.
“Turn in here,” I heard Tate say, though he sounded far away. I glanced at Tate who was sitting stiffly in the passenger seat. At some point he’d grabbed the arm rest on the door and I could see his bloodless fingertips digging into the smooth material. His left hand was fisted and rubbing up and down his thigh. I was tempted to reach for him, but decided against it. I needed to be on full alert. I kept my eyes on the road as I reached behind my back to pull out my gun and I ignored Tate’s sharply indrawn breath as I settled it in my lap.
The driveway Tate had pointed to wasn’t really a driveway at all. With the overgrown trees and brush, it barely counted as a road. Tree limbs and branches dragged over the truck as I tried to avoid some of the bigger ruts in the muddy road. The sound of wood scraping over metal was eerie and I could see Tate’s breath ratcheting up as the overgrown vegetation blocked out much of the sunlight as we made our way farther down the path. The dense greenery wasn’t a good sign that we’d find what we were looking for and that fact was confirmed a moment later when we finally entered a clearing and saw a doublewide mobile home that had vines and bushes growing all around it. Junk and trash littered the entire front yard and there was a rusted out older model sedan sitting off to the side on blocks, its engine gone.
I stopped the truck near the door and turned to face Tate. “Stay behind me. You see anything or anyone, you get down and stay there till I tell you it’s okay, got it?”
Tate swallowed hard and nodded. We both got out and met around the front of the truck. Even though the place had clearly been deserted some time ago, I kept my eyes open and my gun in my hand as I placed Tate behind me and headed towards the front door.
It was easy to get into the trailer since it wasn’t locked. Several windows of the trailer had been broken at some point so the smell inside wasn’t as rancid as it probably could have been, but it also meant that various wildlife had managed to find their way into the structure and the second we stepped inside, I saw several rats scurry for cover. The inside didn’t look much better than the outside and whenever Buck and Denny had left, it didn’t appear they’d taken much with them because there were several pieces of furniture in the living room along with an older model TV.
As disappointed as I was to find the place completely deserted, I also felt a pang of relief because it meant I could focus the majority of my attention on Tate who’d gone deathly pale as soon as we’d stepped into the place. He moved past me and examined the living room. He didn’t say anything as he walked towards the back of the trailer. The kitchen and the two bedrooms we passed were in thesame state of shambles, but Tate didn’t stop until we reached the very last bedroom at the back of the trailer. He had to wrestle with the door to get it all the way open because there was so much debris on the floor. But while the other rooms had just looked like someone had been in a rush to leave, the last room looked like a tornado had hit it.
Or someone in a rage.
“Your room?” I asked as I looked at the shredded mattress, scattered clothes and broken knickknacks.
Tate only nodded. There were a couple of posters on the wall, but they were torn, their pieces dangling precariously.
“I loved this room,” he finally whispered as he moved to the foldable plastic table in the corner that had clearly been turned into a desk. “Doesn’t really make sense, does it?” he said as he fingered what looked like the pieces of a torn photograph. He glanced over his shoulder at me. “I hated this place, them, but this room…it was the only place I ever felt safe even when I wasn’t.” Tate shook his head in confusion.
“It makes perfect sense to me,” I admitted.
Tate looked at me almost hopefully.
“It was your escape,” I said. “They may have still been able to hurt your body in this room, but they couldn’t reach you here,” I said as I pointed to my head.
Tate glanced around the room and then nodded. He returned his gaze to me. “Did you have a place like that?”
I shook my head. “No, not a place…a person.”
“Your wife?” Tate asked softly.
For once, the mention of Revay didn’t send a searing pain throughout my entire body. “Yes, but she wasn’t my wife then.”
“Tell me,” Tate whispered and even though he wasn’t anywhere near me, his voice felt like a caress.
I should have told him no or made an excuse about not having time, but I couldn’t force the words out. To my surprise, I wanted to tell him.
“I met her in the third grade. I’d moved to town a few months earlier but hadn’t gone to school right away so that day had beenmy first. The desk next to hers was the only one open. A lot of the other kids were laughing at me because my clothes didn’t really fit me and I…I hadn’t showered in a while so I guess I smelled kind of bad.”
