The Running Girls(40)
By the time Laurie reached her apartment, she didn’t know if the salt on her face was from sweat or tears. Try as she might, she’d been unable to fight the urge of her mind to take her back to that time. She recalled the varying advice she’d been given after the stillbirth, the hardest of all being that she could try again, as if Milly had been some kind of failed experiment. It was hard enough that she had been stillborn, but for her girl to be treated as if she hadn’t really existed was the cruelest thing of all. She and David had named their little girl and buried her, and now they both grieved for her like all parents grieved for their children. That she had died before her birth didn’t mean a thing, and Laurie would honor her for the rest of her life.
“Right,” she said to herself, as her pulse rate plummeted. She tried to refocus as she climbed the stairs, and only heard the sound from within her apartment once she’d opened the door.
Chapter Twenty-One
Laurie would have reached for her gun had she been carrying, and it took her a few seconds to realize that would have been a mistake. David had returned early and was in the living room with his earphones on. He jumped up on seeing her, his hand to his chest as he said, “God! You scared the crap out of me.”
All the tension of the last few days hit Laurie at once, heightened by her recent thoughts of Milly. Seeing David sent a wave of conflicting emotions through her. She wanted to embrace him, to seek comfort in his arms, at the same time wanting to hurt him for the way he’d been making her feel. “I thought you weren’t back until tomorrow,” she said, hearing the coldness in her words, wanting to take them back but not knowing how.
“Last-minute change of mind. Bad weather brewing. You haven’t seen it on the news?”
The weather forecast had been background news for the last few days, but she hadn’t paid it much attention. Already this hurricane season, islanders had twice received warnings about storms hitting the island, only for both storms to veer away to sea. Storm and hurricane notices were a way of life in Galveston. The Great Storm of 1900 was the deadliest natural disaster in US history, and Hurricane Rita and Hurricane Ike were still recent memories, the latter in particular causing incredible damage to Galveston and the Bolivar Peninsula. Laurie had stayed put during Ike, and could still recall the dread of being on the island during the storm, and the harrowing days that followed without power or facilities.
“I didn’t realize it was that serious,” she said.
“Who knows? They say it might be changing course. They ain’t going to be taking any chances, so you’re stuck with me earlier than you thought.”
He was trying to be cute, but a few minutes ago Laurie had run past Rebecca Whitehead’s house and was in no mood to play happy couples with him, even if the lure of his arms felt momentarily welcome. “I need to shower,” she said, leaving him looking confused as she went to the bathroom.
Running the shower, she sat on the toilet and allowed herself to cry again. Instead of easing her tension, the run had somehow compounded everything. The release of her tears gave her some perspective, though, and she realized that in all the commotion of finding Grace’s body and interviewing Frank, she hadn’t really given any thought to how today’s events would affect David. His estranged father was now a suspect in another murder, and images of Grace Harrington would naturally bring with it devastating memories of his mother. It didn’t matter how angry she was with him, he needed to know and she needed to be the one to tell him.
She showered first, feeling sluggish as she noted signs of weight gain around her middle and on her arms. Her training was haphazard at the moment, and with the current investigation she wasn’t eating the right things. She ran her hand over the slight curve of her belly and found it difficult to believe it had once protruded so hugely from her body, full of life.
“David,” she said, as she left the bathroom, a large towel draped around her. The living-room lights were switched off, so she went to the bedroom, ready to face the difficult task of telling him about today, only to find him lying on the bed. She spread the wet towel over the back of a chair and climbed into bed next to him, the sound of his gentle breathing lulling her into sleep.
Laurie was up first. She brewed some coffee and sat in the living room waiting for David to wake, the sound of wind rattling against the windowpanes keeping her company. On the television, the only news was of the potential hurricane making its way to Texas. Galveston’s mayor was on, talking about a possible evacuation of the island. That had happened both for Rita and Ike, and both times it had been a catastrophe, people getting trapped for hours as they fled the coast; during Rita, more people had died on the road than during the storm itself.
Laurie muted the television, unable to deal with the idea that a hurricane could be making their lives even worse in the next few days, when she had more pressing concerns. The most pressing of which was telling David about Grace Harrington.
She had played out what she was going to say to him over and over in her head, trying to predict his responses, but gave it up. It was impossible to guess how he would react. He could go withdrawn and sullen, or he could turn angry and blame her for going to see his father and helping him to adjust back to life in Galveston so easily.
In the end, she was forced to wake him. Bringing him a coffee, she nudged him awake. “We need to talk,” she said, as he stirred from his sleep.