Page 40 of A Lonely Road
“Is that who you saw today? This Shawn guy?”
A shudder wracked her body, but she shook her head firmly. “No. I don’t think so, anyway. That guy at the barthat night, he looked so much like Shawn, it threw me a bit. He’s been on my mind a lot more than usual since then.”
“Understandably. Did the guy today look like them, too?”
She nodded. “In a generic sort of way, yes. Mousy brown hair, tall. Creepy. I didn’t get a good enough look to really say.”
My hand moved slowly up and down her back, the repetitive movement comforting us both as something fierce and protective ignited along my veins. “So there’s no reason to think that guy is trying to find you? To settle a grudge?”
At that, she sighed heavily and buried her face against my neck. “No. I mean, I don’t think so. I don’t know why he would bother. After it happened, my dad called in some favors to dig into Shawn’s past. It turned out he’d done something similar to half a dozen other women, and after my mom, he disappeared into thin air. He’s probably drinking mai tais in Tahiti or something by now.”
“You haven’t seen him again since it all went down?”
“No,” she hedged, but the word was unconvincing.
I cupped the back of her neck and tipped her head so she could see my raised brow. “No?”
“I don’t know for sure. There have been a few instances over the years where I thought I saw him out of the corner of my eye in random places. When I’d look again, he’d be gone. I thought it was my mind playing tricks on me, because it happened more at the beginning.”
“Does it still happen?”
She hesitated, then said, “The day I had coffee with Sam, I got that same feeling, like someone was watching me, but I didn’t see anyone. Probably just my nerves.”
So soon after the incident at the bar, I wouldn’t be surprised if her imagination had run wild, but what if someone had actually been watching her? I didn’t want to freak her out any more than she already was, so I kept that to myself for the time being.
“Is he the reason why you moved around so much?” I asked.
“Not directly. I just start to feel claustrophobic when I’ve been in one place too long. I guess I always blamed my childhood rather than that period of time, but . . . I don’t know. I think I’ve been looking for somewhere I might finally feel safe.”
“I hate that you’ve been dealing with this for so long.” I kissed the top of her head and tucked her back under my arm, snug against my side.
“I just always wondered if I should have done something different, you know? Been more tactful or something so it didn’t all come crashing down on my mom like that.”
“Nora,” I said, my voice firm, “not a single thing that happened was your fault. All of that is on him.”
“I know. Logically, I know that.”
I thought back to the scene at the bar, wondering if the fresh trauma from that night had colored her reaction to a chance encounter today. Not that I could blame her for it, even if that happened to be the case. The longer I thought about it, the more my gut twisted with that fiercely protective surge of emotion.
“Have you had panic attacks like that before?” I asked.
After the incident at The Mermaid, I’d chalked up her breakdown on the sidewalk to an adrenaline crash, but the thought of Nora struggling to breathe when I wasn’t there to help her through it opened a gaping chasm in my chest.
A tiny sigh ghosted past her lips. “The year after it happened, I had a few of them. Maybe more than a few, I guess. My dad insisted I talk to a therapist and that helped. It helped a lot, really. The panic attacks tapered off, but I saw the therapist until I graduated and moved away. After that, I think . . . I think I started avoiding anything that might trigger one.”
I chewed on that for a minute, reflecting on the way she’d moved around so often, avoided serious relationships, kept to herself as much as possible. It might have kept the anxiety at bay for a time, but I was beyond certain now that she wasn’t cut out for such a lonely existence.
And as much as I wanted to wrap her in my arms and protect her from the rest of the world, I was also pretty sure she’d never agree to that.
Instead of offering something she might refuse, I pressed my lips to her temple. “Where’s your dad now?”
“I think he’s docked off the Chesapeake Bay at the moment. He retired and bought a houseboat. We keep in touch, when he has cell service, anyway. ”
“I’d like to meet him someday,” I said softly. “He must be a hell of a guy to have ended up with a daughter as special as you, Nora.”
Though she had held herself together all through the sad tale of her mother’s withdrawal, my gentle comment somehow opened the floodgates. I held her as she cried, stroked her hair and soothed her, hoping she understood just how precious she was to me already. Having witnessed the true depths of Nora’s strength made her sorrow all the more heartbreaking for me to watch.
It was a long time before either of us spoke.
