Page 102 of Quiet Beautiful Things

Dallas points to their huge walk-in closet. “But it looks like someone has.”

I run a hand through my hair when I see Lissa’s wedding dress in a pile on the closet floor. Drawers are half-opened, having been riffled through. Hangers are empty. Most of Lissa’s clothes are gone. And it looks like she did it in a hurry. Hell, the whole thing only went down less than an hour ago. She must have high-tailed it back here and moved her shit out.

“Jesus,” Dallas says. “She’s not fucking around. Looks like she means it.”

“Can you blame her? She probably moved back in with her folks.”

“Let’s head over to Mom and Dad’s house. Maybe he went there instead. And they’re probably stuck at the winery dealing with all the guests.”

We have to drive down McQuaid Circle and through a residential neighborhood to get to our childhood home. I jerk against my seatbelt when Dallas stops his truck in the middle of the road.

“Fuck!” he barks.

I look at Dallas. He’s staring down the street. In his haste to get to Mom and Dad’s, he turned down his old street. The street with the house Phoebe and DJ died in.

A car honks behind us, but Dallas doesn’t move.

I roll down the window and wave them by. Dallas doesn’t even notice when the teen driving an old Camero flips him the bird. I think it might have been a Calloway, one of Cooper’s cousins: Colt, Grey, or Storm.

“You could turn around,” I say, stating the obvious when he seems frozen in place.

He ignores the suggestion, staring without even blinking. After I wave a few more cars past, he finally asks, “Do you know who bought the place?”

Dallas took off right after the funeral. He had Dad handle the sale on his behalf. I gather this is the first time he’s driven down this street since.

“A retired couple I think. They moved from the city.”

I can almost see his relief that a young family didn’t move in and are living the life he was robbed of.

“When do you think you’ll move back?” I ask, seeing an opportunity.

He looks away from the house like I asked him when he was going to eat nails. “Never.”

“Come on.Never?”

“That’s what I said.”

“Dallas, it’s been—”

“Don’t fucking tell me how long it’s been. Because I already know. It’s been two years, one month, and twenty-six days. Do you think just because it’s been that long that I’ll magically get over it? Get over the fact that my twenty-six-year-old wife and six-month-old baby died in this town. In that house? That when I left for work that morning and kissed Phoebe goodbye it would be the last time I ever touched her? That when I held DJ, I hadno way of knowing he’d never live to see his first birthday, crawl, or call me Daddy?”

His voice cracks at the last word, and I feel my heart breaking in a way it never would have before I became a father myself.

“What the hell don’t you understand? That DJ died first, alone in his crib, and Phoebe had no idea what had happened when she succumbed herself, crumpling to the kitchen floor in convulsions before she died? Don’t you get that every fucking day of my miserable life, I wonder what would have happened if I’d gotten home from work on time instead of staying late to earn brownie points from our father? That if I’d been there, I could have done something. Or at least died with them.”

I’m not sure I can even speak. That was a lot of shit to unpack.

“Jesus.” I scrub a hand across my face. “I’m sorry.”

He backs into a driveway, turns in the other direction, and drives five minutes out of the way to get to our parents’ house.

“His car isn’t here,” I say. “Let’s check anyway.”

It takes a lot longer to go through Montana Manor than it did Lucas’s penthouse. It doesn’t matter, though. It’s empty as well.

“Should we check the bars?” I ask.

“He’s not going to go anywhere with people. Everyone in this town knew today was his wedding.” He looks out the back window in thought. “How about the back forty?”

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