Page 5 of A Deeper Darkness
She turned the water a little warmer and rinsed, taking care to remove all of the residue, because she’d developed an allergy to the industrial hand soap the state provided, and when it was left on her skin her hands turned red and flaked. At least, that’s what she told herself.
She turned the sink off with her elbow and used the harsh brown paper towels to dry off. A flash of light from the suite indicated the morgue garage doors were opening. She did not look.
It was understood among the staff.
Sam didn’t post drownings.
Not anymore.
Into her office for a moment, to gather her purse and keys. She needed to go home.
Numb.
It was better that way.
* * *
She didn’t go straight home. She drove for hours, aimlessly, around Nashville, seeing but not seeing.
The Batman Building looming high over the city, the focal point for miles around. The Capitol, stately on its hill, flags flapping in the breeze. The persistent bottleneck where the three highways kissed. The leafy greenness that turned to woods and farms five miles from downtown. A storm was brewing, rain billowing in from the west. Sam shivered. Rain meant something else to her now.
She avoided those areas that had been ravaged during the flood.
Her town. She’d grown up here, lived and loved here. Lost everything here. She loved it still, but the emptiness was all-consuming.
The house was quiet when she finally arrived, dark. She’d forgotten to turn on the front lights again. Her answering machine had a blinking light. She set the mail on the counter, poured two fingers of Laphroaig and hit Play. The voice that spilled forth was unusually subdued.
“Sam, dear, it’s Eleanor. When you have a moment, would you please call me? On my cell phone.”
Click.The empty hiss of dead air filled her kitchen.
Eleanor.
Sam rubbed her forehead with her free hand, then took a sip of scotch. Her pulse picked up. She had a terrible feeling, one all too familiar.
Eleanor Donovan was a friend from D.C., the mother of one of Sam’s few boyfriends, the boy she’d dated during medical school at Georgetown. Twenty, fifteen, even ten years ago, a message from Eleanor would have filled her with alarm. Concern that she’d always stowed away, hidden from everyone around her. But now, no. Donovan was out of the military. There was no reason to worry about him anymore. Admitting she was worried about Donovan was paramount to admitting she’d loved him, once—something she wasn’t ever willing to do. Her feelings for Donovan were private. Something just for her.
And, of course, for Eleanor, Donovan’s too-perceptive mother, who’d seen the emotions coiled in Sam’s gut as if they were naked on her face.
If Sam was being honest with herself, her ties to Nashville were the death knell for her relationship with Donovan. She had another waiting at home, a man she’d been with for years, a man she was taking a break from while she attended medical school because it would be “healthy.” She wasn’t supposed to fall in love with someone else. That wasn’t a part of the deal. Dating, dinners, maybe even a little sex, all sanctioned. Love, no.
Hearts are traitorous things—fickle, capricious and certainly not under the thumb of the rational mind. Sam was astonished to find she had no control over hers.
Eleanor had known all along. She’d been kind enough never to speak of it, but calmly, generously, kept Sam in Donovan’s sphere with monthly phone calls, little updates disguised as “keeping in touch.” Sam knew he’d finished his third tour as an infantry officer in the Middle East, Afghanistan this time, was married with two girls and had finally left the service and taken a job as a security consultant in D.C.
She picked up the phone and dialed Eleanor’s cell, that voice in the back of her mind, her sixth sense, roaring in her ears:something is wrong.
Just like two years ago.
One ring, two, three, then Eleanor finally answered.
“Thank goodness it’s you, Sam. I have some bad news.”
“What’s happened, Eleanor?” Sam heard the tremble in her own voice echoed across the line, the older woman’s wavering slightly more. She already knew what the next statement would be.
“Sweetheart, Eddie’s been killed.”
The words floated into the air in the dark house, shimmering in the gloom, and Sam realized she’d neglected to turn on the inside lights, too.
