I turn back around, heart thudding.
“Do you…” Hesitating, I take a step closer. “Do you recognize me? From the band Honey Moons?”
The man’s eyes narrow slightly.
The woman straightens behind the scratch-off display.
“Honey Moons,” the clerk echoes. “Yes. That’s the one he was in.”
The air shifts. Not hostile but wary.
Hedoesn’t need to be named.
“I’m not here to cause trouble,” I say quickly. “I just…” I glance around the store, this cleaned-up version of a place that still carries blood in its corners. “I just wanted to stop by since I remember what happened and I—”
“Whole town knew. Then the internet knew. Then they lit us up.” The manadjusts his eyeglasses, gaze unreadable. “You know how many windows were smashed once word got out? How many death threats we got?”
The woman’s arms fold. “It got ugly after everything made the social media rounds. People threw bricks. Spray-painted awful things on the windows. Branded my father a monster.”
“I know,” I say softly. “I’m sorry.”
She exhales, tapping her burgundy nails on the counter. “But he came back, you know. This past spring.”
My pulse kicks up. “Chase?”
Spring.
The same season he disappeared, leaving nothing but a scribbled note, an “I love you” fading from his lips, and a broken heart full of loss in his wake.
“Yes. He handed me a check,” the man says. “Didn’t ask for anything. Just said he wanted to make it right. For the station. For my daughter. For what it cost us.”
“He asked about my medical schooling,” she adds, her voice softening. “Said he hoped I made it all the way through.”
My eyes sting. “He…never told me.”
The woman studies me for a beat, her brown eyes tender. “He didn’t say much. Just that he’d made mistakes. That this was one he could at least try to make right, and that he wished he’d come by sooner.”
I blink fast, throat thick. “That sounds like him.” Then I look at her, absorbing the quiet warmth behind her words. “I’m Annalise.”
She offers her hand across the counter. “Parvati.”
“Thank you. For telling me.”
She gives a small nod.
As I turn to leave, Parvati calls out one more time. “Hey…if you see him, tell him we appreciate the money. It saved us.” She looks down as she unzips a backpack with a hospital badge clipped to the strap. “And let him know I’m still going. Two years into my residency. Neurology.”
Her fingers brush the tag:Resident, Parvati Singh—Rutland Regional Medical Center.
“Yeah,” I murmur, fingers curling around the plastic bag, my chest full. “I will.”
Then I push open the door and step into the frost and sunlight, heart pounding, mind racing, the past pressing closer with every mile I put between me and that station.
I drive.
Toward the cabin.
Toward Chase.
