Page 48 of The Summer You Found Me

I march out of the office and make it to my car before I crumple, letting my face press to the steering wheel as the tears begin.

My phone chimes with a text from Stanich, but there’s nothing he can say to make this right...and I know he’s unlikely totryto make this right.

Todd Stanich

Kate, I’m very sorry you misinterpreted my meaning to such an extent. I’m willing to let it go, but your behavior today concerned me. I really hope you’re not using again.

I’m too defeated to even get mad. He’s doing damage control and he’ll get away with it, because being a female puts you at a disadvantage anyway, but being an addict? It offers douchebags like Stanich a get-out-of-jail-free card for just about anything. No one would ever take my word over his.

I don’t want to return to the empty cabin or go to the bar and have to explain how it went wrong to Beck. I just want to go to the chair in Hannah’s nursery, back to a time when our whole future lay ahead of us.

The only place I want to be is one that no longer exists.

22

BECK

Ifucked up the other day. I know that.

And I nearly made things so much worse.

I’ve had no idea how to set things right, and I still don’t, but Kate had her interview today, and the resulting silence has me worried I might have missed my chance. She’s got to be done by now. I doubt they’d have offered her the job on the spot, but if they did, she might be home packing her shit, and if it went badly, well, that’s an even bigger worry. Kate can take a hit. She takes hits so well you convince yourself she can’t be toppled and then you discover she’s shattered, suddenly and without warning.

Pregnancy healed something broken inside her and losing the baby cut her off at the knees. I’m wondering if she’s been shattered again as the minutes tick by.

By three I’ve sent her a text, to which she does not reply. At four I call, something I only do in life-or-death situations, and when she doesn’t answer, I begin to panic. Kate would answer if I called, no matter how mad she was.

I leave Mueller in charge of the bar and head home. The house is empty, her morning coffee cup still on the counter. I doubt she’s come back since the interview, so where the hell did she go?

It could be nothing. Maybe her interview went spectacularly and she’s spent the day in HR, filling out paperwork. Maybe she celebrated by looking at apartments.

Or maybe it went horribly, and she decided to give up. Why the fuck didn’t I ever ask where that dealer of hers lives? I’m on the cusp of calling Caleb to ask when I remember the storage unit, and Kate’s hand wrapping around the curved rail of the crib.

It was hard to watch. I know Caleb had to move on, but I wish he could have done it without dismantling their old life in the process. Without shoving every memory of Hannah into a cinderblock room as if it were meaningless.

I drive past Elliott Springs and south toward Santa Cruz until I reach the storage unit. Her car is one of the few in the lot. I’m relieved, but also...not.

The door is ajar and she’s sitting in the rocking chair, holding a photo in her hands. Her eyes are red-rimmed and vacant as they meet mine.

It’s as if she’s pushed her hand into my chest and squeezed. Kate, who does not cry, has been crying for a long fucking time today.

I take a single step toward her. “Kate, what are you doing here, sweetheart?”

“I don’t know.” Her voice is raspy from disuse or tears.

When I’m only a foot away, she glances down to the photo in her hands and swallows. “This was three years ago today. Look how big she was.”

I squat in front of her so I’m at eye level and take Hannah’s sonogram from her hand. Kate’s face crumples, her shoulders shaking as she releases a sob.

My eyes squeeze shut briefly, the same way they did when I heard Hannah had died. As if I can close myself off from the pain. Except that’s what Caleb did for years, closing himself off from his painandhers—and look how that turned out.

I rise, and then I scoop Kate into my arms like a child.

I expect her to fight this—because when does Kate not fighteverything?—but she doesn’t. She curves into me as if she can’t hold herself upright any longer. She has such an oversized personality that I forget, sometimes, just how tiny she is.

I settle back into the chair and she rests her cheek against my chest.

“She was totally healthy then,” she says. “If we’d just known...”

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