His Brother's Bride
Page 61
“Afraid so.”
“How do you keep it from getting to you? I keep thinking about William and Cecilia, what might be happening to them—or what’s already happened—and I get a sick feeling in my stomach.”
“It gets to me, but I’ve learned to channel my thoughts.”
His voice was strong in the darkness. Reassuring.
“To what?”
“I just focus on finding the answers. The sooner I do, the sooner the suffering stops, one way or the other.”
It was what Laurel had been trying to do most of the afternoon. Unfortunately she couldn’t control her thoughts the way Scott did. She envied him that.
They walked silently for a bit. The park was deserted except for the two of them, making Laurel feel that they were all alone in the world—a feeling she didn’t mind at all. Swing sets, monkey bars, a sandbox were all just shadowy shapes in the night.
“I saw you making a phone call when we stopped for gas this afternoon.” Scott’s voice, though soft, consumed her in the darkness.
“Yeah.” She’d thought he was in the men’s room.
“Were you calling the station?”
“No.”
“Who, then?’
She felt guilty as hell. “A friend.”
“Someone you know well?”
“Fairly well.”
“Someone you spend a lot of time with?”
“A fair amount.” Fair. Fairly. She needed to find another word. There was nothing fair about any of this.
A light breeze swept over them and Laurel shivered.
“A man?”
She didn’t want to do this and felt incredibly disloyal. “Yes.”
“Does he have a name?”
“Shane.”
“You’re dating him?” She couldn’t tell if the odd note in Scott’s voice was her own paranoid imagination or really there.
“Not really.”
“How do you not really date someone?”
Darting off the sidewalk, Laurel ran across the grass. “Let’s swing,” she called to Scott, sitting down in one of the black leather straps, grabbing hold of the chains with both hands and pushing off.
Instead of joining her, racing to see who could get the highest as he might have done in their other life, Scott stood behind her, gently pushing her.
“You didn’t answer my question,” he said after a time.
“We spend most of our free time together,” she said slowly, trying to explain something she didn’t really understand herself. “Go to movies, to the theater, to dinner.”