Total pages in book: 79
Estimated words: 75656 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 378(@200wpm)___ 303(@250wpm)___ 252(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 75656 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 378(@200wpm)___ 303(@250wpm)___ 252(@300wpm)
“Similar to your advice for T.J,” she says. “I’ll give those a try for his nightmares.”
“Buck ran drills with me after that call. He used the trigger words over and over, so I could keep moving through it.”
Her brows draw together. “That sounds brutal.”
“It was useful.”
“Yeah? It helped?”
I shrug. “Enough that I kept going.”
“That’s good.” She gives me a small smile. “Tyler used to say progress doesn’t always look the way people want it to.”
I’m silent for a moment because the words hit hard in a couple of different ways. “I don’t like needing the adjustment,” I say eventually.
“No, I wouldn’t imagine you do.”
The way she seems to understand gets to me. “I’m supposed to be able to handle stress,” I tell her.
Her mouth softens in a way that makes my chest go tight. “I’m a principal. I manage hundreds of children and adults full of strong opinions. I can handle stress, too, but that doesn’t mean I handle every kind of stress the same way.”
She smiles again, with her soft, warm eyes, and I make the mistake of looking at her for too long.
The lighting in the kitchen has a yellowish cast, and it should be unflattering, but it isn’t. Beneath her unbuttoned coat, the stretchy shirt she’s wearing follows the full shape of her breasts in a way that makes me drag my eyes back to her face a second too late. Shorter strands of hair have escaped her braid, and I have a wild urge to brush them away from her temples.
All of this makes it hard to remember that I’m supposed to be keeping my distance.
Instead, I’m sitting across from her, telling her things I don’t tell anybody unless they already know the damage firsthand.
“I should get back,” she says, without making any move to do so. “It’s getting late. Mae would probably let T.J. stay up forever if I’m not there to supervise.”
I clear my throat and reluctantly push my chair back. “I’ll walk you out.”
Snow has begun falling while we’ve been inside, dusting the parking lot with a thin layer of white. She starts to say goodbye at the door, but I walk her to her SUV.
“Thank you,” she says after she clicks her lock open.
“For what?”
“For the suggestions about the school, and for all the rest of it.”
I don’t have a good response to that, so I just tell her to drive safely.
One corner of her mouth lifts. “It’s barely a minute down the road.”
“I know, but the roads will be slick.”
Her smile lingers for half a second longer, then she opens the door and gets in.
I stand there until her headlights sweep across the lot and turn toward town, then I get in my truck and follow her anyway.
It’s not far to Mae Whitaker’s house. Just two short turns and a short stretch of road lined with dark trees. The porch light is on, waiting for Elena, and there’s a warm glow coming from the front window.
I stay parked by the curb until Elena gives me a slight wave and disappears inside.
Back at the station, I’m still keyed up, though in a different way than before. I try to work through it, wiping surfaces, checking nozzles, recoiling lines, and restocking cabinets, but the tightness in my chest persists.
The station felt too large when I first arrived, and now the space seems too tight, so I go outside. The snow has stopped, but it left another clean layer, covering our earlier footprints and tire tracks. The temperature’s dropped enough that my breath is visible.
It’s a quiet night, and I circle the station’s perimeter slowly, hands in my coat pockets, scanning more out of habit than expectation.
On the side of the lot facing the school, I stop when I come to a disturbance in the snow. Narrow tire tracks, freshly made, though no one’s in sight.
I follow the trail to where the vehicle came in off the side access, rolled along the outside edge of the lot, and stopped just beyond the strongest wash of the security lights, where the trees thicken.
From this spot, there’s a clear line of sight to the front bays and the station’s entrance without being obvious from the road.
I crouch for a better look at the tread patterns, which are too narrow for one of the engines and wrong for a pickup. The tread is wide and clean, and the vehicle had enough weight to press through the fresh snow without slipping.
Straightening, I look out into the dark, where nothing moves. The school’s lot is empty and still.
The tracks continue a few feet, then double back the way they came in, but it’s not the trail of someone turning around in the wrong place. Someone sat here on purpose.
I take out my phone and photograph the tracks from different angles. The sheriff’s department has been on the lookout for unfamiliar cars in town. This could help.