The hail had passed and now they were being soaked by a steady rain. Before long Abby could see the truck, and Tom wasted no time going to the passenger side. “Can you open the door?”
She pulled on the handle and he deposited her on the seat, slammed the door again, and jogged around to the other side.
“Out of the rain, at least,” she mused, marveling that she could manage to make such a mundane comment when she’d nearly died just minutes earlier. Reality felt very surreal and skewed at the moment.
Tom’s gaze pierced her, making her feel strange as he started the truck and cranked on the heater. “Take off your hoodie,” he commanded, reaching into the back. He held up an old sweatshirt, a heavy navy thing with the words GONE FISHIN emblazoned on it in gold.
“I’m fine,” she insisted.
“You’re soaking wet and probably in shock. Take off your shirt or I’ll do it for you, Abby.”
She fumbled with the zipper and sleeves, the wet material clinging to her skin. Beneath the hoodie her T-shirt was also wet. “That one, too,” he said.
“Tom, I…”
Sympathy softened his eyes. “It’s okay,” he said quietly, gentling his tone. He reached for the hem of her shirt and pulled it over her head, easing it down her arms. There was nothing sexual about it, just tender caring. He held out the sweatshirt, making it easier for her to put her arms in the sleeves and pull it over her head. It was enormous on her much smaller frame, but it was soft and warm and smelled of lumber.
He put the truck in gear and turned around, pointing them down the hill again. Abby curled into the sweatshirt, relieved that the heater in the truck was working. She didn’t understand why she was so cold.
And then she remembered her leg.
“Your seat!” she exclaimed, looking down. The blood flow had slowed, but there was still a rusty-red streak on the beige upholstery.
But that wasn’t the worst. She finally saw her knees and the sight of the raw skin stubbled with splinters sent sickening tingles from her stomach right down the backs of her legs to her toes. This was why he hadn’t let her try walking.
“It’s not as bad as it looks,” he said quietly.
“Are you sure?”
He went right by her driveway and kept on going toward town.
Was it so bad then that he was taking her to the doctor? She bit down on her lip. “My purse and everything is at the house.”
“The storm knocked the power out,” he explained. “We’re going to my place. Even if there’s no power there either, I have a generator.”
She laughed shortly. “Of course you do.”
Now that she’d seen her knees it seemed they started stinging worse. She spent the remainder of the drive with her eyes closed, trying to breathe evenly. But when she closed her eyes, she saw Kristian’s frightened face just as the walls started tumbling down. And she heard Tom’s voice calling her name and it seemed to make her heart expand and warm all at once.
It was better if she kept her eyes open after all.
“I finally got through the rest of the attic stuff,” she said, the idea taking her mind off the pain.
“Find anything interesting?” he asked.
They’d left things in a bad way between them, with a reluctant truce. And yet Abby still trusted him. He’d been with her through this whole journey and it seemed strange, not giving him the whole story. “I found a little chest. It was a pile of Edith’s personal things. Makeup, hairbrushes, books … her diary.”
For a moment Tom looked over at her, his gaze sharp. “A diary, huh?”
“The lock was broken off it. If
Elijah did that, he would have been livid after reading it. He was not a nice man, Tom.”
“So we gathered.”
She took a breath, let it out slowly, trying to ease the stabbing in her knees. “Remember I said I saw a suitcase in my … well, let’s call it my vision. There was a letter to Edith’s parents that she never got to give them. She was planning on leaving him that night. On V-E Day. She was taking the kids and meeting Kristian and leaving. Only she never got the chance.”
“Are you serious?” Tom’s eyebrows lifted and once again he took his eyes off the road and looked over. “Where were they going to go?”