“As a USFS Special Agent, I was called in since it happened in the national forest. I left to come here to tell you, but I was waiting for the right moment. Jack is still at the scene, but I’m not sure he’ll be investigating either since he and Nathan are close. It could be the new guy.”
“The new guy?”
“Trevor West is the new detective. Jack suspects Henry will give him the investigation.”
Erin nodded and wished her stomach would settle down. She glanced at Mom. They didn’t need this news right now. Mom got up from the table and tossed the rest of her half-eaten slice into the trash.
Terra looked from Mom back to Erin, and realization seemed to dawn in her eyes that talking about this in front of Erin’s mother, who’d recently left the hospital after swallowing a bottle of Valium, wasn’t the best idea. She mouthed the words, “I’m so sorry.”
Erin needed to change the subject. “How’s Jack doing?”
Grayback County detective Jack Tanner and Terra had gotten engaged last fall, and Erin couldn’t be happier for her friend. The two had split up years ago and found their way back to each other. The thought reminded her that she and Nathan had split up five years ago before she’d left for Washington. They’d known each other growing up, but it wasn’t until college, when their majors centering around crime caused their paths to cross now and then, that Nathan had finally asked her out. Given her issues, she never should have let herself fall for him. And she’d tried to stay away. They had danced around their attraction for years, and then finally she agreed to that first date that turned into a year-long serious relationship.
If she’d ever wanted a chance with the right guy, she’d blown it.
And she didn’t see them getting back together. Terra didn’t answer Erin’s question, but her intense gaze pulled her back to the moment.
And what had happened. Erin’s heart seized in her chest. “Poor Nathan. He hadn’t seen his dad in years, last I heard. Did his father move back?”
Terra shrugged. “I think he was visiting for a few days.”
Mom slid back into her chair at the table and pressed her hand over Erin’s. “You should go to the hospital and be there for him.”
Still staring at her plate, she shook her head. “Mom, we’re not together anymore. That was years ago. He wouldn’t want me there.”
“He’s such a good man. A good detective. He stayed with me, waiting at the hospital until you got there. Nadine told me.” Mom offered a compassionate but tenuous smile, as if almost begging Erin to go.
Thanks for the guilt trip.When Nadine found Mom and the empty bottle of pills, she called 911, then contacted Jack, her detective nephew, but Nathan showed up first. Jack was on a call across the county. Nathan then called Erin with the news. He’d been supportive and checked on things every couple of days since Mom was released from the hospital. Mom was right. Nathan was a good man.
“I think you should go too,” Terra said.
They were ganging up on her now.
“My presence would only be an intrusion.” Then again, if she could return the favor or help in any way . . .
“How about I hang out here while you go?” Terra asked.
Erin glanced at Mom and then Terra, who subtly nodded, conveying that she understood Erin wouldn’t leave her mother alone. Not yet. Not until she was sure Mom was no longer a danger to herself.
“How about that, Mom?” Erin asked. “You and Terra could watch some old episodes of Hawaii Five-O.”
Mom shrugged, clearly not liking the idea they wouldn’t leave her to stay alone. Still, she didn’t argue or try to win a losing battle. “That sounds fine. If Terra staying with me is what it takes for you to go to the hospital. Or, if you’re busy, Terra, I could call Nadine or even Delmar next door to come over.”
“Terra’s here, Mom.” While Nadine would be fine, Erin didn’t know how long she would be gone. And she still didn’t like creepy Delmar.
An hour and a half later, Erin rushed into the hospital in Bozeman, the nearest trauma center, and asked for Newt Campbell. She was directed to a waiting area.
What am I doing here? A simple call would have been enough. After the way she’d hurt Nathan before, when she walked away from a future with him, she had no right to step back into his life. But they’d been close once, and when he called her about Mom, she knew they were still connected, though painfully so.
Another step and she was in the waiting area. Across the room, Nathan held his mother, Elisa Campbell, in his arms as she cried. Though Nathan’s eyes were closed, Erin could see the raw pain etched in his features, and her heart stuttered to see him like this.
Oh no. His dad couldn’t be dead. Please, Lord, let it not be so.
She swallowed the knot swelling in her throat andtook in his rugged face. The scruffy jaw and thick, black hair that she’d once loved to weave her fingers through. The memories flooded her and almost took her breath away.
When he glanced up, his dark-brown gaze hung on Erin. At the agony spiking through his eyes, she almost took a step back. She wasn’t sure what to do. Join them? Sit in a chair and wait? Why had she come?
When a doctor approached, Nathan released his mother and turned to hear what news the physician would deliver. Then he glanced over his shoulder at Erin and gave a subtle nod, a simple acknowledgment that he knew she cared, before he entered a set of double doors with his mother. ICU.
Erin gathered that his dad had survived but was in critical condition.
Nathan knew she’d come and she cared. Was it truly enough?
By our work we are known...
She would go home now. But as she walked away, she had the odd sense that the earth shifted and rumbled beneath her, and all the stability she’d fought for and gained was crumbling away.