“Hey,” he says. “I dialed before I realized you’re probably at work.”
“Not there yet,” she says. “But close.”
“I still can’t believe you’re working.” He gives a little laugh. “You were supposed to be taking it easy.” She can hear his smile, can picture his face in her mind as he says, “So like you to get a job even though you don’t have to.”
“I wanted to do my part. You know, money-wise. It felt weird with you taking care of everything and me not contributing at all. It felt... wrong. And besides, it gives me something to do.”
“I know—I just didn’t think you’d, you know, return. I mean, with everything—” He stops talking, but she hears his unsaid words anyway. With everything that happened, he never thought she’d go back to police work again. He’s not the only one.
At the time she’d felt she had no other choice but to leave, at first just the job, but soon it became her home as well as the job. There were too many reminders, too many triggers. It wasn’t just PTSD and it wasn’t just grief that sent her running. It was some hybrid of the two, a condition that—regardless of the name—had left her rudderless, altered.
The only thing she could think of that might make a difference would be to go somewhere else, someplace not so familiar, to be around people who didn’t know her, in a place that didn’t hold unpleasant memories. Alex couldn’t come—he had a demanding job and was up for a promotion—so he’d let her go alone. She’d left before he could change his mind. Now she understands without him saying it that he regrets that decision.
“Like I said,” she finally replies, “it keeps me busy. And it’s not like anything ever happens here. It’s a very low-risk situation.” She gives a little laugh to reassure him. “It’s a big night if we get a drunk and disorderly.”
She pauses so he can speak, but he doesn’t. In her negotiator training they learned to use pauses for effect. If you pause long enough, the other person will feel compelled to speak just to fill the silence. Nature abhors a vacuum and all that. But it is she who fills the silence now.
“Thanks, by the way,” she says, changing the subject, “for the flowers.”
“You know I couldn’t let your birthday go by without doing something,” he chides her, but there is a playful tone in his voice. In that moment she misses him, wishes she could click her heels and be back in Pennsylvania.
“Yeah, I guess I should’ve expected it. I just didn’t want to...”
“Celebrate,” he says, repeating what she’d said a few weeks ago when he suggested he come down and visit for her birthday. He’d made it sound casual, but they both knew it was not.
“Well, I’m just about there,” she responds, because she doesn’t know what else to say.Celebrateis a word that went missing from her vocabulary eight months ago.
“Listen,” he says, talking faster now that he knows his time is running out. “I didn’t call you about the flowers.”
She opens her mouth to ask him if they can talk about this later, but he continues before she can speak. “I called because you got a letter. Or actually, not a letter. More like an invitation. It’s an... event. They’re recognizing you for, you know, what happened. I don’t want to say too much—I want you to see it. I think maybe it would help. If you’d like, I could overnight it to you? I could go to the post office right now and—”
Hope can barely hear him over the sound of her heart thudding away inside her chest. She doesn’t want to be recognized. She wants to be as anonymous as she is in this town. “Alex,” she says, her husband’s name like a stranger’s as she speaks it. “I’m about to start a shift. I can’t really talk about this now.”
“Okay,” he says. She hears him sigh, the air leaving him like a popped balloon. “We can talk about it later.” He must know she will not want to talk about it later, but he has the grace not to say so.
“I really do have to go into work now,” she says, which is the truth. She has reached the doors of the combination town hall/police station.
“Yeah, okay,” he says. “I’ll let you go.”
But Hope knows that isn’t true, and though it makes no sense, she counts on it.
Chapter 10
Back at the post office, Sylvie does her best to ignore the distinct combination of nausea and wooziness that means she needs to eat, and soon. Standing on the hard surface of the tiled floor, she ponders what will happen if she pushes herself too hard and passes out right there, in the midst of all that is already taking place. She moves over to the counter, balances her weight against it, and silently reprimands herself for not eating before she left the house. She hadn’t been hungry when she made lunch for Robert, figuring she’d eat later. Only now it is later and that isn’t an option.
She is always pushing herself, denying her age, as if ignoring it will change it. The question comes to mind again: How did she get to be so old? Time went by, that’s how. And no matter how much she protests, her age won’t change. That is a fact, like gravity. It is, she reminds herself, better than the alternative.
She looks down at her feet, anchored to the floor by an invisible force. But what is keeping her there is not invisible. She glares over at Tommy, though he doesn’t see it, what with his pacing and muttering. She wonders what, if anything, she can do to make things better. She wishes for Robert, or at least the Robert of the past, the steady, calm presence of him that once made her feel safe. He took care of her. He always had.
She’d grown complacent over the years, lulled into thinkingthat the way it was was the way it always would be. That she would be herself and Robert would be Robert. Until one day he didn’t know which house was theirs. Granted, they lived in a planned retirement community where all the homes looked similar, all variations on a theme. It was an easy mistake to make. That’s what she’d told herself at first.
Tommy turns from the windows and looks at all of them. He appears as lost as Robert had that day, blinking at the four women in the room as if he does not know who they are or why they are there with him. He’s gotten himself into a mess, Sylvie thinks. A mess he doesn’t know how to get himself out of. If only he hadn’t chased that woman out with a gun. If only he hadn’t fired at them when they tried to run away.
He should’ve let them go and then fled himself. There was a moment when all of this could’ve been resolved with little fuss. But they have sailed past that moment. As their eyes make contact, she suspects this is all occurring to him now and the reality is amping up his desperation. A desperate man is a dangerous one. Somehow she will need to make him believe there is still hope.
In her mind she sees the verse from Jeremiah they have mounted over their doorway at home. It’s been in every home they’ve ever lived in, hand-painted by a dear aunt and gifted to them on their wedding day. It is a verse people often like to quote, the one about hope and a future. But she will need to give Tommy hopefora future. The reality is, if this goes much further or, God forbid, goes badly, his future won’t be looking so hopeful. But she can’t let him start believing that or it will only make the situation more difficult.
Tommy gestures at Sylvie, at all of them, twirling his finger in a circular motion. “Have a seat,” he says, but none of them move. Nadine, Blythe, Morrow, and Sylvie just stand in place, blinkingat him like they don’t understand the words that have come out of his mouth. Mostly because what he said doesn’t make sense. There is nowhere to sit except for on the hard floor that hundreds of dirty shoes have tramped across, tracking who knows what all kinds of germs in their wake.No, thank you, Sylvie thinks.
