“Yeah,” she said. Fifteen hundred people. It was so small.
“Where am I taking you?” he asked as he headed down Main Street.
“I might just go home,” she said.
“Sure thing, Lily. Where are you living these days?”
Her ID had an Arizona address. Where was she living?
She cleared the dust from her throat. “Actually, I need to visit a friend at the hospital.”
“Oh no. Nothing serious, I hope.”
She clamped her mouth shut.
Jim shook his head and raised a hand. “Sorry,” he said quickly. “Starting to sound like my wife, Annie, asking all sorts of questions. None of my business. I’ll drop you at the hospital straightaway.”
“That would be great. Thanks.”
Lily watched the streets, the small houses, the businesses. Home, she thought to herself. This is home. She would go to the hospital to check on Brent, and then she’d find her own house. Contact her parents.
She searched the truck’s dash for a clock. “Do you happen to have the time?”
Jim turned his wrist to look at his watch. “Just about nine fifteen now.”
“Nine fifteen,” she repeated.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“And what’s the date today?”
He glanced over at her.
“I should know,” she said quickly. “I’ve been on the road a few days, and I’m afraid I lost track.”
He glanced at her again before answering. “This here’s the seventh.”
“The seventh,” she repeated. “Sure.”
“January seventh,” he said, eyeing her.
“Of course,” she told him.
A beat passed in quiet, Jim watching her from the corner of his eye. “I was at your dad’s service last year,” Jim said, his tone softening. “Guess it’s been almost two years now.”
Service. She blinked back the well of tears. Her father was dead.
Jim shook his head. “I should have come up to say hello, but there were so many folks, you know,” he went on. “I was sorry about his passing.”
She nodded mutely, trying to stir up memories of her father’s funeral. But it was blank.
“Oh, jeez,” Jim said, patting her awkwardly on the shoulder. “I didn’t mean to upset you. You surely been through enough not to have to listen to an old man prattle on.”
Lily shook her head. “I’m fine.”
Jim turned into a parking lot and pulled to the front of the hospital, a small, single-level brick building. “You sure you can get inside on that ankle?” he asked. “Looks like you hurt it.”
“I’ll be fine,” she assured him. “Thanks again.”
Jim turned to face her. “Your dad was a good man, Lily, but he never did recover from losing your mom. She went way too early.”
Lily barely heard the words, her hand on the handle of the door. She couldn’t escape the truck fast enough.
“You be careful,” Jim called after her. “Call on us up at the house if you need anything.”
Not just her father. Both of her parents were dead. A tear slipped down her cheek, burning against her skin. She wiped it away and hobbled toward the hospital door.
CHAPTER 8
IVER
Cal whined, and Iver put a hand on the soft fur of his neck in an effort to calm the dog—or maybe to calm himself. Davis pulled out his phone and placed it in front of Iver on the table. “Does this woman look familiar to you?”
Iver set down the pill bottle and drew breath through his teeth, filling his lungs before lifting the phone. The vision in his left eye was still blurry, and he couldn’t quite make out her face. He used his fingers to zoom in until he could see her features. She was about the right age to work in the bar. He tended to employ women in their mid- to late twenties and always from somewhere other than Hagen.
The girls who grew up in Hagen were sisters or cousins of guys he’d known in high school. No one wanted their sister or cousin working in his bar. Mostly he hired from the community college two towns over—the students were better workers, more focused. But she was not familiar. He shook his head. “No,” he said, the word catching on something in his throat. Not something. Fear.
“You’ve never seen her in here?” Davis said again.
“No. Never.” He looked up at Mike. “You seen her?”
“No. And Nate and Kevin and Wyatt neither.”
Iver felt the slightest bit of relief. If no one had seen her in here, then he hadn’t seen her either. Right? “Nate would know,” Iver told the sheriff. “He’s good at faces. Or Donnie, since he’s at the door. I spend most of the night back in the office.”
“And the office doesn’t have a door to the outside?” the woman detective asked.
Iver’s pulse seemed to beat directly through his left eye.
“No,” Sheriff Davis said to her and turned back to Iver. “Only way out of the office is through the bar.”
Iver thought about the small window above the desk. As kids, he and Mike used to climb into the bar through that window to steal liquor. Until his father had caught them.
Iver nodded. “Right.” He could barely hold her gaze, the way his head was pounding. Maybe these were routine questions. Maybe they asked everyone. The pain was escalating. He felt like he might throw up. He needed to lie down.
“What time did you come in yesterday?” Davis asked.
“Around three,” he said. “Nate and Mike were already here.”
“And you left at ten thirty, you said?” Davis asked.
“About then,” Iver said, unable to get rid of the bitter taste now caught in his throat. Maybe they were right to ask him. He tried to remember what he’d been doing before he’d left the bar. The night would have been in full swing. Sometimes, he stood behind the bar and watched. Other times, he stayed in his office and drank alone. Most nights it was all a little fuzzy. Last night, it was a black hole. He recalled that Nate had come in at some point to tell him they were running low on Seagram’s Seven. He’d made a note. Or was it Beam?
“And you didn’t come back for any reason?” Davis asked.
He shook his head, willing the words from his mouth. “No.” It sounded like he was choking.
“Anyone corroborate your story, Iver?” Davis asked. “Was your wife home?”
The word wife jolted his insides. Every damn time. Iver forced himself to look Davis in the eye. “She moved out,” Iver said. “Almost a year now.”
Mike shifted beside him, his gaze aimed at the floor, as though uncomfortable hearing Iver talk about his divorce. They didn’t talk about stuff like this. They weren’t that type of friends. Not anymore, anyway. Somewhere along the way, they’d stopped talking about things that mattered.
Maybe it was him. Maybe Afghanistan had made him into someone who was hard to talk to.
“I’m sorry,” Davis said, and the table was quiet a moment. Perhaps Davis was thinking about his own wife. Iver couldn’t remember her name now.
What was the right response? I’m sorry, too. I’m sorry and pissed and angry, and most nights I’m so lonely that I stay at my bar until I’m just buzzed and tired enough that I can go home, take my meds, and not even know that I’m in my own bed, let alone that no one is there with me.