Page 42 of Forever Gone

The town had grown around its margins, but the center remained much as Kelly remembered it. Brick storefronts faced the road. A church steeple rose above the roofs. Pickup trucks occupied the angled spaces outside a diner whose sign had been repainted without changing its name.

The place had always seemed larger when she was young.

Kelly had grown up in Eagleton, where some people spoke about Elmsview as if the two towns existed on opposite sides of a national border. The rivalry followed Eagleton students even after they crossed into Elmsview for high school, spilling into parking lots, dances, and arguments over which town produced tougher kids.

A smile touched Kelly’s mouth.

How had they allowed something so foolish to matter?

Children inherited grudges before they understood them. Eagleton against Elmsview. Families against families. Girls deciding who belonged and who deserved to be driven from a locker room in tears.

The smile disappeared.

Selena’s sedan turned into the sheriff’s department parking lot.

Kelly followed and parked three spaces away. Selena got out without checking behind her, crossed to the entrance, and disappeared inside.

Kelly remained in the car.

The temporary transfer had seemed right when Meg Calloway called. Seattle had become difficult long before Kelly filed the paperwork. The office, the rain, the apartment she had stopped trying to make feel like a home. Each day repeated the one before it until a transfer anywhere else began to seem less like a career move and more like escape.

Then Meg mentioned Harlan County.

A new office. A chance to help build its procedures instead of inheriting somebody else’s habits. Violent-crime work in a region that needed federal support. Kelly could arrive early, establish relationships, and become part of whatever the Eagleton post developed into.

When Meg said Selena Raven would head the office, Kelly accepted before thinking through what that meant.

Some part of her had believed the years would have weakened the past.

They had not.

Kelly caught her reflection in the rear-view mirror. The makeup beneath her eyes had gathered slightly near the lower lashes. She reached into her bag for a compact, then stopped with her hand inside it.

Selena’s words returned.

You chose it. Again, and again.

Kelly had.

There was no useful defense. At sixteen, she had been a rich girl with a car, expensive clothes, and parents who donated money whenever the school needed something. Teachers gave her the benefit of every doubt. Other students laughed when she expected them to laugh.

She had used all of it against people who could not answer back. And all because her father was handy with his fists behind closed doors. What if she told Selena that? That her father was a violent bastard who took pleasure in disciplining his family. What if she told Selena that when she was grounded for already being mean, her father locked her in a dark closet for 12 hours without water. Would that have mattered?

Kelly pushed those memories away.

Kelly whispered, “If only they knew what I was going through.”

The sentence sounded weak inside the closed car.

Pain did not excuse cruelty. She knew that now. At sixteen, she had not wanted anyone to know what happened behind the gates of her family’s home, or how fear could follow her downstairs while she wore clothes that cost more than some families spent on groceries. Keeping that secret had required control. At school, she had found it by making other people afraid first.

A tear slipped down her cheek.

Kelly wiped it away, angry at herself for allowing it. She opened the compact, repaired the faint line in her foundation, and checked that no redness remained around her eyes.

The sheriff’s department waited beyond the windshield.

Maybe coming back had been a mistake. Selena did not owe her forgiveness, and working beside someone who remembered her at her worst could become impossible for both.