Chapter 6
Chapter
Six
“Do you want a ride to the hospital?”
Tate’s question took Cat by surprise. After last night, she’d been sure they were going to give each other a wide berth.
He didn’t seem angry or cold this morning. If anything, he’d asked the question gently, his expressive eyes soft and warm. This was the Tate she’d known before.
She hadn’t answered, but somehow she found herself in the passenger seat of his vehicle, heading towards the hospital.
Numb. That’s how she was feeling at the moment.
Since she’d seen Tyler’s bloody body at the end of the driveway, she’d disassociated from the event to deal with her emotions and horror.
In a way, this was all happening to someone else, and she was simply an observer, like she was watching a television show play out in front of her eyes.
So far, it had been working, but little by little, she was beginning to lose that objectivity. It was going to hit home at any moment, and she wasn’t sure she was ready to deal with it all.
“I’m planning to buy myself a car,” she heard herself saying, wanting to talk about something normal and boring. “I just haven’t had the chance yet. I didn’t need one in the city.”
“I’m sure it was easier not to have one,” Tate replied. “I’m sure being home is an adjustment after living in a big city for so long.”
“It is in some ways, but not in others. Some things are shockingly still the same. The town librarian is the same person. There’s construction on Valley Avenue. The pizza place still has that lunch special with two slices and a drink, although it’s fifty cents more than when I left.”
The town familiarity had been a balm to her soul now that she was back home. It was exactly what she’d needed when her world had changed so abruptly.
“Elaine Bender has been the town librarian since we were kids. She often gets asked when she will retire, and she says never. I believe her. As for Valley Avenue, they did finish their repaving project, but now they want to put a traffic light at the corner of Benson. There have been a few accidents when people turn left.”
Road construction seemed to take forever in Winslow Heights. Cat was unsure why, but projects were often measured in years, not weeks or months, if her mother was to be believed.
“And the pizza?”
“The owner, Hank, doesn’t like change,” Tate laughed. “His daughter had to twist his arm to get him to raise the price. But he would only do it fifty cents. She wanted a dollar.”
“A whole dollar? That’s highway robbery,” she joked.
“That’s pretty much what Hank said. He and the missus will spend a few months during the winter in Florida. I think his daughter plans to raise the price again while he’s gone.”
“He’s going to be mad.”
“Livid,” Tate agreed. “Listen, I wanted to apologize about last night. I acted like a jerk. I’m sorry about that.”
Cat hadn’t expected him to apologize. To be truthful, she hadn’t been blameless.
“I’m sorry, too,” she said. “In a way that it pains me to admit, I did want you to say that it was all okay. I have felt guilty, and I guess that I thought you could make that go away. I should have reached out, and I didn’t.
That was wrong. I wish that I had. I’m not proud of the way that I’ve behaved.
You weren’t out of line in pointing it out. ”
“I’d had kind of a bad day, and I took it out on you. I didn’t plan to get into it with you.”
What had he planned? To avoid or ignore her? She wouldn’t blame him.
“But I brought it up.”
Because of the guilt.
“Well…yeah. I thought I’d put it behind me, but I guess - deep down - it still bothered me. But it was a long time ago.”
The way he said it… It didn’t sound like it had been a long time ago. At least, not to him.
“As someone who recently faced possibly losing my mother, I doubt it gets any easier as time goes on.”
Lily Winslow had been the heart and soul of the Winslow family. Her children had adored her, and she’d been close to all of them—a loving mother who truly wanted the best for all of her kids. Her disappearance must have left a Grand Canyon-sized hole in their hearts.
“It doesn’t,” Tate replied, his voice tight. “It’s the not knowing that’s the hardest part.”
“No information all of these years? Nothing at all?”
Tate pulled into the hospital parking lot, turning off the car before answering.
“In the beginning, we’d get leads from people.
We had an information hotline open, but honestly, it was mostly pranks and cranks.
A couple of psychics said they could help us, but nothing panned out.
It was pretty quiet until last year, when they found a body in the woods.
It wasn’t her, but it made us decide to hire a private investigator. ”
“You didn’t do that before?”
The Winslow family had the resources to have an entire team of investigators at their disposal.
“Dad said that he had private investigators work on the case and that they found nothing. We…let’s just say that we’re at a point that we can’t trust what my dad says.”
“Oh.”
Tate’s relationship with his father had never been a close or easy one. Joel Winslow was a difficult man at the best of times. He hadn’t much liked Cat when she was dating his son. He’d never said it out loud, but she’d received the message regardless.
You aren’t good enough for my son.
The day Tate had left for his fancy, out-of-state college, Joel Winslow had smiled like the cat that had eaten the canary. While she’d been crying at the airport, he’d been practically spitting feathers. He’d won. She’d lost.
Joel Winslow liked to win. He hated to lose even more.
If she and Tate had somehow managed to stay together, they would have faced an uphill battle against the family patriarch.
“You’re not going to ask any questions about that?”
“I don’t see any benefit to opening up that subject,” she replied. “Unless you want to talk about it.”
“Let’s just say that some things haven’t changed and leave it at that.”
“I heard he got married last year.”
She watched Tate’s expression closely, but he didn’t reveal much.
“Yes, he married Aunt Kimberly. She’s Mom’s sister, if you didn’t know. It’s messy, to be frank, and none of us wants anything to do with it. But you know my dad, he follows his own rules, and he doesn’t give a shit what anyone else thinks.”
“It’s probably nice when you have fuck-you money,” she observed. “I’ve seen that in my career, sometimes for good and sometimes for evil.”
“That’s an excellent way to put it,” Tate laughed, a genuine grin on his face. “Fuck-you money. That’s a perfect way to describe it. Can I steal that? I’m going to have to, whether you let me or not.”
“It’s all yours,” she offered. “I didn’t make it up, I just remembered the phrase.”
“You don’t have fuck-you money?”
“Hardly,” Cat replied. “I made good money, but nowhere did I make that kind of cash. Plus, living in the city isn’t cheap.”
“I’m guessing you paid for your mother’s cancer treatments, too.”
She had, but no one had ever guessed that. Everyone had assumed that insurance paid for it. But that was just like Tate. He saw more deeply than most people.
Thanks to Cat’s modeling money, Grace Townsend had the best of everything—doctors, hospitals, chemo, even private hospital rooms that looked more like plush apartments. It had cost an arm and a leg, but it had been worth it. She would do it again in a heartbeat.
“She’s my mother,” Cat said awkwardly. “You’d do the same for your mom.”
“I would love the chance,” Tate replied so softly she barely heard him.
He pushed open the driver’s door of the vehicle.
“Are you sure you’re okay to go in there? I know you’ve spent some time in hospitals recently, and it couldn’t have been fun. No one will think less of you if you can’t go in there.”
“I’m fine.”
She congratulated herself on sounding confident, but inside, she wasn’t as positive. She could still see all the blood on Tyler and the ground. So much blood.
They walked into the hospital and headed for the emergency department. Rachel and Josh were already there, pacing the floors, waiting for some word about Tyler’s condition.
“They’re still working on him,” Josh said when he saw them arrive. “One nurse did say that they’re trying to stabilize him for surgery.”
Larry and Diane stepped off of the elevator, rushing toward them, wearing matching worried frowns.
“What’s going on? Have you heard anything?” Larry asked, slightly breathless.
“We got here as fast as we could,” Diane explained. “Finn is still taking statements. He doesn’t seem to understand the seriousness of the situation.”
“Someone tried to shoot Tyler,” Tate interjected. “That’s attempted murder, and that’s serious. He has to do this by the book. We don’t want a killer getting off on any technicalities, right?”
“Of course, we don’t,” Diane replied defensively. “It’s just that we needed to be here. He could get our statements later.”
“After we all have a chance to compare notes?” Tate asked. “C’mon. He can’t do that. He’s doing his job.”
“You know the one thing I’ve never liked about you, Tate, is that you have a need to be right,” Diane said, her teeth visibly gritted together. “In fact, there are many things I don’t like about you.”
“Your disdain doesn’t make me any less correct,” Tate said with a smile and a shrug, completely unbothered by Diane’s aggression. “The law doesn’t care about our delicate feelings. And unless you’re a trauma surgeon, Tyler doesn’t technically need us here.”
Diane was not a surgeon, and if anyone needed to be right all the time, it was her.
“Let’s just stop all of this,” Larry said with a loud sigh. “Honey, Tate’s right. Finn is just trying to do his job. I don’t like it either, but he has to do it. We’re here now.”
“We could have been here earlier,” Diane sniped back, her lip curled in derision. “And if you had any sort of backbone?—”
“This is not helpful,” Rachel shouted over the other woman talking. “We shouldn’t be having petty arguments when Tyler is fighting for his life.”
Luckily, Diane didn’t get to reply. The swinging doors to the treatment area swung open, and a man wearing scrubs and a mask stepped into the waiting room where they’d gathered.
He pulled down his mask, his expression sober and not encouraging in the least. The pit in Cat’s stomach tightened painfully.
Had Tyler died?
“I’m Dr. Phillips, the attending in charge. We were finally able to stabilize your friend,” the man said. “He’s heading up to the operating room right now. Have you been able to reach his family?”
“I left a message with his dad,” Josh replied. “Tyler’s made jokes about how his parents let their cellphones die all the time. I’m sure they’ll get the message soon.”
“No other family? No wife or kids?”
“He’s single,” Rachel explained. “No brothers or sisters. I think he has a girlfriend back in Seattle, but I’m not sure. I don’t know how to get hold of her.”
“Please let the nurse know when his parents arrive,” the doctor said, as he turned to go.
“We’ll need to talk to them. I would suggest that you all go home.
I know it’s hard to leave your friend, but the surgery is going to take at least six to eight hours.
We can’t make you comfortable here. If you leave your phone number, we can call one of you when he’s in recovery. You can come back then to see him.”
“Doctor?” Josh said, his tone sharp and a little desperate. “Is my friend going to make it?”
Something passed across the tired physician’s features. Pity? Sadness? Cat couldn’t identify it.
“I don’t know. I wish I could answer your question, but the truth is…I don’t know.”
With that, the doctor disappeared into the treatment area, leaving them all standing there in stunned silence.
It was real. This wasn’t some television show or terrible nightmare. Tyler had been shot.
He might die.
There wasn’t a damn thing that Cat could do about it. Not one thing.
And they didn’t even know who did it. Or why.