CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR #2
“So how long you around for?” she asked.
“I don’t know. Until this case is figured out, at least.”
“And then what? Leave again? Back to the big city away from us country bumpkins?”
Selena sat back. “It’s not like that.”
The question should have been easy. It was not. A few days earlier she would have answered without thinking. Back to Washington. Back to work. Back to the life she had chosen and defended for fifteen years.
Now the answer caught.
“I don’t know what I’ll do after, to be honest,” she said.
“When I first came here a few days ago, I wanted to get out as quickly as I could. But seeing my dad, you, even Connor and the town… I feel like I’ve left something behind that I didn’t realize I needed.
God, I don’t even know if that makes sense. ”
Jessie’s eyes narrowed slightly, not with suspicion this time but with interest.
“So, you might hang around for a while?”
Selena smiled faintly. “Maybe. I don’t know. I guess we’ll just have to see if I catch this bad guy first. Then the rest will take care of itself.”
Jessie took another sip of her shake. “There are rumors you guys are chasing down Elias Croft.”
Selena reached for her own drink. “Oh? Do you know him?”
“Sure I do.” Jessie glanced toward the window, then back. “When I was still using, I ended up at a few of his sermons. They helped.”
Selena nodded carefully. “Oh. Well, if it helped.”
She did not want to contest that. Not after what Jessie had just shared. Not when comfort, even borrowed comfort, might have been the thing that kept her upright at all.
Jessie pointed a finger at her. “Don’t tell my brother I flirted with religion. You know what he’s like about these sorts of things. He’d think they were taking advantage of me.”
Selena laughed, and this time it came easily. “Yeah, he’s like that.”
Jessie’s smile faded first.
“You know,” she said, quieter now, “my brother missed you terribly when you left after the accident. It was hard on him. Hard on all of us.”
Selena felt the words land in the center of her. Seeing Jessie. Hearing her voice. They had always confided in each other growing up. Somehow, her presence tore away at the facade Selena had built herself. The truth just poured out like it had been caught, trapped behind a dam wall.
“I missed him, too,” she said. “But we were too far gone. That woman…”
At once the old image rose.
A smashed car. Headlights at the wrong angle. A woman on the street outside Selena’s old home, broken and bleeding and trying to speak through a ruined breath. Selena kneeling in the road, hands red, hearing other people shouting and another engine idling somewhere close by.
Jessie watched her carefully.
“Look,” she said, “you thought Connor was cheating and left him. I get it. Then the crazy woman you think he was with turns up outside your dad’s house to see you.”
“She didn’t just turn up outside my home, Jessie.” Selena’s voice had tightened without permission. “She was there and was run over.”
Jessie fell silent.
“I tried to help… She died in my arms,” Selena said. “I never even spoke with her. She tried to say something and just…” Her throat closed briefly. “She was gone.”
Jessie looked down at the table. “I get it. That was terrible. But you can’t hold that against Connor.”
“I know that.”
It came out too fast.
Because she did know it, at least in the clean, rational part of her mind.
But deeper down the question had always remained, however much she despised herself for keeping it alive.
A woman she suspected of having an affair with her husband appears on her street and dies before she can explain why she was there.
The driver flees and is never apprehended.
Nothing is resolved. No confession. No denial that feels final enough to rest on.
It was the last call for her and Connor’s marriage.
Selena felt it had been a sign at the time.
It wasn’t just the poor woman who died that night. It was Selena’s attachment to her home.
Selena said gently, “You always told me you weren’t taking sides.”
“In your marriage? I wasn’t.” Jessie looked up and held Selena’s gaze. “But now you’re not married. You’re working together right now. Hopefully friends, if possible. And I’m telling you Connor would never have had anything to do with that woman or the accident.”
Selena stared into her coffee.
Steam curled up and vanished.
“I know that,” she said again, softer this time. But she still didn’t know whether that was really true or not.
Jessie leaned back. “Then maybe you need to stop asking life to explain it in a neat way. They never caught the driver. That doesn’t make Connor guilty of anything.”
Selena let out a slow breath. In her darkest moments, she had feared Connor was the driver. Cutting the woman down to stop her from ruining any chance he had of reconnecting with his wife. How she hoped and prayed that wasn’t true. But there were no guarantees in life. Not when love came into it.
Jessie rubbed at her brow. “I’m sorry for bringing it up. I just think you went away from Elmsview looking for answers in life, but maybe…” She paused. “Maybe you need to come to peace with what happened in the past first. And who knows, it might change your life for the better.”
“Maybe.”
Selena said it because it was true enough to admit and vague enough to survive.
Then she shifted the subject before the grief in her throat thickened any further.
“You said you went to Croft’s revival a few times,” Selena said. “Did you ever see anything weird there?”
Jessie frowned. “I didn’t, no. But there was another girl from my rehab. Donna Murphy. Something bad happened with her.”
Selena straightened a little. “What sort of bad?”
Jessie shook her head. “She never told me. Just started going strange after one of the meetings. Quiet. Scared, maybe. Then she stopped showing up to group for a bit.”
Selena sensed something. This felt fated almost. Jessie crossing paths with the revival. And this woman, Donna. She logically knew it would probably amount to nothing, but her heart told her more. It told her to leave no stone unturned.
“Can you give me her contact info?”
Jessie looked at her, then reached into her bag for a pen. “Sure.”
She tore a scrap from a napkin dispenser ad sheet, scribbled down an address, and slid it across the table.
Selena took it.
Jessie watched her pocket the paper and sighed. “Why do I have the feeling you’re about to run off before finishing your milkshake?”
Instead of answering, Selena put the straw in her mouth and guzzled the rest of it down in one determined pull.
Jessie stared.
Selena sat back, closed her eyes, and clutched her forehead. “Ow.”
Jessie burst out laughing. “Brain freeze.”
Selena nodded without opening her eyes. “Yes.” Then she laughed too.
The laugh did them both good.
By the time she stood, urgency had fully returned. Donna Murphy. Another thread. Another woman who might have seen something. Or had something happen to her and never named it.
Hank appeared as if summoned by haste itself.
“You want that coffee to go?”
Selena was already reaching for her wallet. She set cash on the table despite Hank’s saying it was on the house. “Yes, please, Hank.”
Jessie stood, too.
For a second, they only looked at each other. Then they hugged, tighter this time, the kind of hug women gave when they both understood that apology alone was not enough but might still be a beginning.
Jessie pulled back first. “Don’t be a stranger.”
Selena held up the scrap of paper. “I’ll call you tomorrow.”
Jessie lifted one eyebrow as if to say she’d believe that when it happened.
Selena smiled and backed toward the door. “Thanks for this.”
Then she turned and dashed out.
Behind her, Hank shouted, “Wait! Your coffee!” But Selena never heard him.