The Things We Couldn't Forget

Chapter 25.

He seems to ponder it for a second and I see the answer playing in his features but I speak before he has the chance to turn her down.

"Yeah, Dal." I hold a hand out to him. "Come with us. You don't want to be here alone anyway."

He stares at my hand, still wanting to say no, but then he looks into the pleading look in my eyes and relents.

"Yeah, ok." He lets me pull him up from the floor and I'm still taken aback at how much of a man he is now. So tall and broad and strong. I start to pull him forward, to follow us out but he tugs it back. "I'll meet you out front."

That fear in his eyes is back and I nod slowly. "Ok."

He turns and goes out of the back door and I lock it behind him before I walk with Kelsea back out the front.

I half expect him to run, but when we get outside he's slowly making his way around the side of the house and over to Kelsea's truck.

We squeeze in and the heat feels good blowing on my freezing body.

"You need to borrow some clothes anyway." Kelsea says to me as we turn out into the main road. "You can't keep wearing sweats and pullovers in this weather."

"I don't know what you have that'll fit, but I'll try." I do my best to smile at her even as every bump in the road makes my body hurt and my stomach roll a little.

The drive out to her neighborhood is a quiet one, but I welcome it. I don't know how much more of the constant chatter of the news I can take today. I'd already heard so much while Kelsea watched it on her phone this morning when she thought I was still asleep.

They still have no clue where Amie could be. She worked her shift at the diner and had texted her mother that she was on her way home, but no one had heard from her since. She never came home. Her car is still missing. The surveillance camera outside of the diner shows her leaving, talking in the phone, and then getting into her car and driving away in the direction of her home.

The friend she'd been speaking to said they were discussing their plans to go out together in Whitefish that night. She said the call was completely normal.

They'd interviewed the girl as she cried, not wanting to accept what the whole town is thinking.

Amie Farmer, is dead.

It's not until we pull into Kelsea's driveway that I remember.

Mrs. Statham lives across the street.

Kelsea gets out and Dallas remains in the truck, his eyes closed as he leans against the window, but I stall behind Kelsea at the porch.

"I'm gonna walk over and check on her." I say and Kelsea nods.

"Ok." She says. "I'll be upstairs."

I walk across the street, maneuvering around the multiple cars parked in Mrs. Statham's driveway and I knock on the front door.

A man I don't recognize answers, his thick grey eyebrows pulling together as he looks me over. "Can I help you?" He asks and I can hear the murmur of voices coming from inside.

"I wanted to see Mrs. Statham." I tell him, shuffling my feet in the thin layer of snow that's blown up onto the porch.

"Hey, Nance," the man calls over his shoulder, keeping his eyes on me. "Someone is here to see you."

A moment later she comes around the door, looking around the man to see who it is.

"Oh, Missy." She sighs. She's dressed in pajamas and her makeup is all gone, just big bags under her red rimmed eyes. "I'm so sorry I didn't call you, I just-."