Page 83 of Tangled Up In You
Chris laughed darkly. “You’re telling me.” He leaned forward, propping his elbows on his thighs and staring bleakly at the floor. “I knew it would be hard, you know? Taking care of her all alone? But I was doing it. I wasn’t bad at it. I certainly didn’t lose my daughter,” he said, voice breaking, and Edward could see that for all the hope he felt, the prospect of finding her was unearthing the pain and guilt all over again. “But she was taken from right next to me, and do you know how hard it is to reckon with that? How easy it is to lay that blame at my own feet?”
“None of this is your doing.”
“I’d have given everything up for her. I had a plan in place for how I could manage as a single dad.” He sniffed, wiping his eyes. “Had neighbors who pitched in,” he said, “but I was managing. And when Gracie disappeared, everyone came together. Everyone put up posters and walked the streets and did everything they could. I felt—” Chris cut off, and then straightened. “Oh my God.”
Edward stopped pacing and turned to face him, skin prickling. “What?”
Chris walked to the window and looked out at the house across the street and a couple doors down. “I’ve spent twenty years thinking about this. I’ve spent twenty years considering every possible angle. I’ve thought about who knew us, who loved us, who showed up when Gracie disappeared. But I never thought about who didn’t.” He looked over his shoulder at Edward. “I think I just realized who took her.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
REN
Ren was up with the sun, and elbow deep in chores long before breakfast. Hard work was preferable to the nonstop reel of doubt playing in her head, and so for a few brief hours she let herself get lost in feeding and watering the animals, collecting eggs, and taking care of nesting boxes. She came inside to shovel a bowl of granola in her mouth between tasks, but Ren might as well have been invisible. The lectures and new rules she’d been convinced were coming never materialized.
Instead, Steve and Gloria talked as if she wasn’t even there, discussing water rights in Oregon and the Portland Farmers Market as they pored over survey and plat maps spread out on the table between them. When Gloria sent Ren to the cellar for peaches, there were already boxes waiting to be packed up to move.
Ren couldn’t wrap her head around it. Her parents were not impulsive. Look up the word cautious and their faces would be right there next to every possible definition. It took them a year to decide where they wanted to dig the pond, and twice as long to finally break ground. They had the same breakfast every morning, went to town the same days every week, and wouldn’t replace something if any amount of duct tape would hold it together. She’d never heard them so much as mention leaving, but now they were already partially packed up and ready to go?
Back in the kitchen, she wished again that she could talk to Edward. The weight of his absence sat heavy in every one of her thoughts as she stood over the sink, the dishwater growing cold in front of her. Whether he was Edward or Fitz, he was still the same man who watched movies he’d seen a dozen times because she never had, suffered through tourist traps so she could have an adventure, and couldn’t stand the idea of sharing a bed because he wanted to kiss her so badly. He was the person who showed her how to kiss, how to cuddle, and how to open her heart to someone new.
He was also the one who drove her to Atlanta to meet her father and insisted she call him and keep him updated, and she never did.
God, what must he be thinking? She needed to let him know that she was okay. She needed to tell him that she was sorry. She needed to figure out how to do that. No one had mentioned a thing about her returning to school, but her trunk was still in her dorm room, full of her things. She was pretty sure nobody would be willing to take her there again.
Ren would have to move with her parents or leave on her own, possibly losing them forever.
The sound of Steve pushing away from the breakfast table snapped her back to what she was supposed to be doing. She set her dishes in the drying rack and wiped her hands, happy to retreat to the barn, where she could lose herself in chores again and figure out a plan. Gloria’s voice stopped her on the way out.
“You can finish your chores later,” she told her, rolling up the maps and fastening each with a rubber band. “Help me load stuff into the truck. We’re headed into town.”
It might not have been intended as punishment, but when Ren’s parents pointed to a bench outside the realty office and told her to stay put until they were done, it certainly felt like one.
The Realtor’s office was in the same tiny storefront as that of the seamstress and the notary, because they were all the same person. Just next door was the bakery owned by Miss Jules, who also doubled as childcare for a handful of younger kids in the area.
Until recently, Ren’s tiny town was the only one she’d ever known; seeing it with new eyes was disorienting. The turnoff from the highway to Main Street had always been exciting. She liked the people, liked seeing how the storefronts slowly changed, liked the novelty of being somewhere different, even if she’d been there a hundred times. Now she imagined Edward sitting next to her and trying to understand how on earth people lived someplace so isolated. For the first time she saw the dents and scuffed paint, the cracked asphalt and crooked shop signs. There was no Starbucks or twenty-four-hour anything. It felt claustrophobic with its cracked one-lane road and single, swinging traffic light. Edward didn’t belong in a place like this. He wouldn’t fit; he’d be too big and worldly for her sleepy town. And the more she thought about it, the more she wondered if she’d grown too big for it, too. With a population in the low triple digits, everyone there knew everyone else and could spot a stranger the second they stepped foot on Main Street. Even a private letter in the mail didn’t go unnoticed.
Mail…
The word poked at the back of her head as her gaze swept to the five-and-dime, just across the street. Ren paused, awareness landing. At the very least she needed to let Edward know that she was okay. She didn’t have a phone and wouldn’t know his number even if she had one. As long as she was here, her parents controlled every aspect of her life, but there was one thing they couldn’t shut down. If she hurried, there might be time.
Knowing the trouble she’d be in if she left without alerting someone, Ren ducked into the bakery. “Miss Jules?” she called out. “If you see my parents, can you let them know I ran into Jesse and Tammy’s shop for a minute and will be right back?”
Jules looked up from her game show reruns and gave Ren an arthritic thumbs-up. “’Course, Ren.”
She jogged across the street and ducked into the dark interior of the little store. Soft country music played from a set of speakers attached to ceiling tiles overhead, and Ren scanned the aisles, spotting Tammy where she was on a stepladder stocking an endcap with canned beans and a sign that advertised a buy two, get one free sale.
“Tammy!” she said brightly. “Hi!”
“Ren! Oh my goodness! Look at you!” Tammy climbed down and pulled Ren in for a hug. “You look like a real college girl!”
“Just the same old Ren from a couple weeks ago,” she said, laughing.
“No way.” Tammy held her by the shoulders at arm’s length, “There’s something in your eyes that wasn’t there before.”
Ren was sure Tammy was right.
Hooking her thumb over her shoulder, Ren asked, “My folks are over at Belinda’s. Would it be okay if I used the restroom?”