CHAPTER THIRTY
Selena almost drove straight back to the Wilson Motel.
The thought came to her at every turn. Take the familiar route. Pack the last of her things. Shower. Sleep badly for a few hours. Leave Harlan County before breakfast, before the town had time to make any more claims on her.
That would have been easier.
For years, easier had been her specialty where home was concerned. Distance. Work. Short calls she could end with a meeting excuse. Cards mailed late. Apologies folded into holidays and birthdays, never into ordinary days when they might have meant more.
The case was over now. Nolan Pruitt was in custody. A man who would answer for his crimes, at least as much as the law could make anyone answer. Connor was okay.
Selena should have felt lighter.
Instead, as the night settled over Harlan County, she felt the weight of all the things she had been too busy surviving to face.
She turned left at the next intersection.
The road took her through Elmsview.
The houses came in scattered at first, porch lights appearing between trees, then closer together as she reached the old residential streets.
Most windows were dark. A television flickered blue behind one curtain.
Somewhere a dog gave a short bark and then thought better of it.
The town had gone quiet in the way small towns did after a long day, as if every house had folded itself inward.
Selena drove slower than she needed to.
When her father’s street came into view, her hands tightened on the wheel.
The white-shingled house sat beneath the big maple, exactly where it had always been and not exactly the same at all. Time had settled into the siding and the porch rail and the steps. A soft yellow light burned in the front room. Another glowed over the porch, drawing moths into its cone.
The swing stood in the yard, half hidden beneath the spread of branches.
Selena parked at the curb and shut off the engine.
For a while, she did not move.
She could see herself at eight years old on that swing, hands wrapped around the chains, legs pumping as hard as she could while Diane yelled that she was going too high.
Their mother had called from the porch for them to stop fighting.
Robert had stood in the yard pretending to judge who had the better form, though he always found a way to call it a draw.
A life could feel whole from a distance. Then you walked closer and saw where the weather had gotten in.
Selena stepped out of the car.
The night air was cool against her face. She crossed the front path, climbed the porch steps, and stopped at the door. Her knuckles hovered over the wood for a second longer than they should have.
Then she knocked.
Something moved inside. A chair creaked. Slow footsteps came across the floor.
“Who is it?” Robert called.
His voice was rough with tiredness but clear enough.
Selena swallowed. “It’s Selena.”
A pause.
Locks turned. The door opened, and Robert stood in the warm spill of the hallway light wearing pajama pants, an old cardigan, and slippers that had seen better years.
His hair stuck up at one side. He looked smaller than she remembered him looking even a few days ago, but his eyes sharpened when he saw her.
“Lena?”
“Hi, Dad.”
He glanced past her toward the car, then back at her face. “Everything all right?”
“Yeah. Everything’s okay.”
He opened the door wider. “Come in, then. Don’t stand out there like a traveling salesman.”
The line was so familiar it nearly hurt.
Selena gave him a small smile but stayed where she was. “I don’t want to keep you up. I’m pretty beat. I just wanted to let you know I’m going to Washington in the morning.”
Robert’s expression changed only a little, but she saw the disappointment. He had always been bad at hiding what mattered to him. Good at silence. Bad at disguise.
“Oh,” he said. “Right away?”
“Early flight.”
“That was quick.”
“I thought the case would take longer, but we got lucky.”
He looked down once, nodding to himself as though he had expected nothing different and was trying not to mind. “Well. Work calls, I suppose.”
“It does, Dad.”
The words sounded thin. Too close to all the old excuses. She had used that exact shape of sentence too many times. Work calls. Things are busy. I’ll try to come down soon. Another month gone. Another year quietly added to the tally.
Robert put one hand against the doorframe. “You sure you don’t want to come in for coffee? I can make a pot.”
“At this hour?”
“I’m old. We drink coffee at stupid hours and complain about sleeping badly.”
That got a laugh from her.
He smiled because she had.
Then the smile faded, and the quiet between them became less easy.
Selena looked past him into the hallway.
Family photographs hung along the wall. Some older than she liked to think about.
Diane at a school dance. Selena in a graduation gown.
Their mother in the garden, one hand raised against the sun.
A photograph of all four of them on the porch, Robert younger and broader, Selena leaning away from Diane because her sister had been trying to pinch her.
She looked back at her father.
“I also came to say something.”
Robert’s brow creased. “What?”
Selena had rehearsed it on the drive. Not perfectly, but enough that she thought the words might come. Now they were lodged somewhere beneath her ribs.
She drew a breath.
“I came to say sorry.”
Robert blinked once. “Lena.”
“No. Let me say it.” She shifted her weight, fighting the urge to make it smaller, cleaner, easier for both of them.
“I’m sorry for not being around like I should have been.
I’m sorry for leaving Diane to handle things.
I’m sorry for telling myself it was just life getting busy when I knew it was more than that. ”
His mouth tightened. Not with anger. With emotion he did not want loose on his face.
“That’s okay,” he said.
“No, it’s not.”
He looked at her then.
Selena kept going before she could retreat.
“It isn’t okay. Maybe there were reasons.
Maybe some of them were even good ones. But I let too much time pass.
I made this place harder in my head than it had to be.
I made all of you part of something I was trying not to feel. Something to run away from.”
Robert’s eyes shone in the porch light. He said nothing.
“And I know saying that now doesn’t fix it,” Selena said. “But it’s going to change.”
The words surprised her with their certainty.
Robert searched her face. “How?”
“I’m going to call every week for a start.”
He gave a faint, skeptical huff. “Every week?”
“Every week.”
“You hate the phone.”
“I hate awkward phone calls. So, we’ll have to make them less awkward.”
That earned her the start of another smile.
She stepped a little closer. “And I want to come back more regularly. Not just when work sends me. Not just when there’s an emergency or when I’ve run out of excuses. I mean it.”
Robert looked away toward the yard.
For a moment, Selena thought he was going to tell her it was unnecessary. That she had her own life. That parents understood these things. All the gentle lies people told to keep from asking for what they needed.
Instead, he nodded.
“That would make me happy,” he said.
The plainness of it cut deeper than accusation would have.
Selena blinked hard and looked down at the porch boards.
“I should’ve done it sooner.”
“All we have is now, kiddo.”
She laughed under her breath, though it came out unsteady. “That sounds like something Mom would’ve said.”
“She was smarter than me. I still use her best lines. She’d be glad you came tonight.”
Selena looked up.
Robert had both hands in the pockets of his cardigan now. His shoulders were slightly rounded, but something in his face had eased. Not healed. That was too much to ask of one conversation. But eased.
“Tell Diane I’m sorry I never saw her this time,” Selena said. “I’ll catch up with her properly next time.”
Robert gave her a look. “You might want armor for that.”
“I know.”
“She’s got a temper.”
“So do I, but hopefully I can avoid using it.”
He nodded.
Selena smiled. “I’ll call her.”
“Good.” He opened the door wider again. “You sure you won’t come in?”
“I can’t tonight. If I sit down, I might not get back up.”
“That bad?”
“It’s been a long few days.”
Robert studied her. “I heard some of it.”
“Small town.”
“Small county.”
She nodded. “Yeah.”
His voice gentled. “You did good, Lena.”
For a second she was no longer an FBI agent, not a woman of forty, not someone who had faced down killers and committees and the wreckage of her own choices. She was a tired daughter on her father’s porch, wanting his approval and hating herself a little for how much it still mattered.
“Thanks, Dad.”
Robert stepped out onto the porch.
Selena met him halfway. The hug was careful at first, both of them negotiating years of distance and the frailty in his body. Then his arms tightened around her, and hers tightened back.
She closed her eyes.
No speech could have done what that moment did. No clever apology. No polished explanation. Just the two of them standing under the porch light while the night carried on around them.
When they finally separated, Robert cleared his throat and looked toward the yard as if something there needed his attention.
Selena followed his gaze.
“The old swing still work?” she said.
Robert slipped one hand around the porch rail. “I oil it every now and then. Don’t know why, really.” He looked at the swing, its seat waiting beneath the maple. “I guess it can be hard to let go of things.”
Selena looked at him, then back at the yard.
“I know.”
Robert nodded once, accepting that as more than it sounded like.
She kissed his cheek. “Goodnight, Dad.”
“Goodnight, Lena. Call when you land.”
“I will.”
“And not three weeks after.”
“Tomorrow,” she said. “I promise.”
She went down the steps and crossed the path to the car. At the curb, she looked back.
Robert was still on the porch, one hand raised.
Selena lifted hers in return, then got into the rental. She started the engine and pulled away slowly, watching the house in the mirror until the bend took it from sight.
The road ahead was dark, but for once it did not feel like something closing behind her.
All she could see was that swing under the maple.
A little girl pushing herself higher into the evening air. Her father laughing from the porch. Diane yelling that it was her turn. Her mother calling them in before supper got cold.
Selena drove on, carrying the memory with her, no longer certain she wanted to let it go.