warn you. Just remember that.”
After that ominous warning, Luke nodded, waved at the man, then pulled slowly away from the checkpoint and onto the freeway.
They proceeded much as the officer had warned, at a slow pace, though it seemed conditions were better than she had feared. While there were certainly pockets of fog, they lifted for long stretches of time, revealing a pristine white landscape that made her grateful for her sunglasses.
She tried to make conversation at random intervals, but Luke shut her off every time with terse, monosyllabic answers. Eventually she tired of fighting the silent treatment and reached into her bag for a novel.
She had never been much of a reader, always too busy playing with friends or helping her dad out in the garden. Months of forced inactivity and the long tedium of a recovery with little else to do had introduced her to the sheer joy of losing herself in a story, reading about someone else’s troubles and triumphs instead of dwelling on her own all the time.
This book was fascinating and well written, and she was able to immerse herself in the story, grateful for the diversion from the tension, until Luke stopped for gas again near the Idaho border.
She got out to stretch her tight, aching leg and limped into the convenience store to use the facilities, then bought another protein bar and an apple.
She wasn’t inside long, but when she returned, Luke was already sitting behind the wheel, ready to go. The man could be a machine sometimes. He didn’t even seem to need so much as a cup of coffee to keep him going.
“We made...better time than I expected,” she said when they were on the road again.
“Still too slow,” he said. “But I’m glad we didn’t hang around at the inn.”
He didn’t seem inclined to say more and Elizabeth sighed. She tried to return to her book but increasingly felt her attention wandering.
She had so many questions she wanted to ask him. About the children, about his construction business, about the community she had once loved. He didn’t want questions from her. He didn’t want anything.
A lump rose in her throat at the sobering realization, but she swallowed it down along with a bite of her protein bar.
While she didn’t feel particularly tired, the tedium and her restless night—added to the extra medication she had taken to make sure she didn’t have another seizure—eventually caught up with her.
After she found her attention wandering away from the story and realized she couldn’t remember what she was reading, she moved her bookmark back to the previous chapter heading, closed her book and created a makeshift pillow out of her coat. She didn’t expect to sleep—Haven Point was only a few hours away, after all. Yet one moment she was watching the lines go by outside the windshield, the next she had escaped into her dreams.
She wasn’t sure how long she was out of it. When she awoke, the trees and mountains on either side of the road began to seem familiar. She knew this landscape, had seen it from the time she and her parents moved here when she was ten.
They were close to Haven Point. Her heart started to pound and her hands felt sweaty. Oh Lord. She couldn’t do this.
Luke seemed to become more grim and foreboding the closer they traveled to their hometown. His jaw looked hard enough now to slice through granite.
“I’m...sorry I fell asleep.”
He glanced over, his eyes as hard as the rest of him. “It was fine. The fog lifted right after you fell asleep. It hasn’t been a bad drive since then.”
She turned her attention out the window, catching glimpses of the pure blue of the lake through the trees as they neared it.
She loved that lake as much as she hated it. Yes, it had brought her joy through her childhood. She had wonderful memories of picnics by the shore, swimming at the beach near downtown, kayaking with her girlfriends in high school.
But it had taken so much from her.
Every mile seemed to contain more memories, not only of Luke but of her parents. Her childhood had been filled with joy, with parents who adored each other and her from the moment she was born, in stark contrast to what Luke endured.
Whenever she thought about the few things he had revealed about his childhood, she wanted to cry. Those memories had come back to her slowly, probably because they were so painful. She remembered he hadn’t wanted to tell her anything, preferring to focus on the present and about the future they wanted to build rather than his heartbreaking past.
His sister had revealed more. Megan had been the one to tell Elizabeth about their brute of a father, his drunken rages, his abuse and how he had singled out Luke for the worst of it.
Her husband would not have been happy with his sister for telling her that. He had only told her that his relationship with his father had not been a good one.
Like so many other things, Luke had shoved down his deepest emotions. He tried so hard not to show anger but sometimes that had translated into burying everything so deep, it was hard to bring anything out. Joy, happiness, love. She knew he felt those things, but during their marriage, he had struggled to show them.
She and her parents had provided a sanctuary for him, a place where he had been loved and accepted from the moment they started dating. She could remember her father taking Luke on fishing trips into the mountains and her mother showing him something she was growing in their beautiful gardens. Luke had lapped up their attention.
When her parents had died so unexpectedly, she had withdrawn into herself and her pain, leaving him with nothing.
She fought the urge to rub her hand against the ache in her chest. Unlike her parents, she had made the choice to leave him alone and she couldn’t blame him if he could never forgive her for that.
As Luke drove around the lake toward home through a beautiful wintry scene, blue skies contrasting with the new snow that coated everything, her heart began to pound. Whenever she returned to Haven Point to see the children’s plays or ball games—always sitting in the back, always trying to stay anonymous—she felt the same sense of peace, as if this was the one place in the world she belonged.
Sometimes before heading back to Boise to the airport, she would have the car service she hired drive past their house, the one on Riverbend Road. If she were extraordinarily lucky, she might see the children playing outside in the yard with their dog or Luke doing something around the house.
Those moments were rare and precious and she cherished them, yet they were like a beautiful, perfect rose that came with plenty of thorns. Seeing the children at home, growing bigger each time she saw them, also made her feel terribly lonely as she rode out of town. She would often cry silent tears the entire way to the airport.
This time would be different. This time she would actually be able to see them. Talk to them. No matter how difficult it was to see Luke again, she could hold on to that joyful thought.
What would they think of her? The reality of the situation started to seep through. Would they be as angry and closed off as Luke? Or would they maybe be a little bit happy to see her again?
As he turned onto their road, panic welled up, cold and relentless, and she had to force herself to breathe slowly
