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“Woodland Orchard Apartments. On the south side, just south of 44 and near the river. It’s like twenty-five minutes.”
“Yeah, I got it. It’s kinda on the way home for me.” He pulled away from the curb and got them on the way.
“Do you need to go home and see to your dogs?”
“Nah. While you were talking to Mav, I called my neighbor across the way. He’s an old guy, a veteran. I help him out with shit around his house, and he looks in on the pack when I can’t.”
Dex lived on the near north side of town, not far from the first house Kelsey had lived in, next door to the Turners.
“That’s nice. Mr. and Mrs. Turner were that kind of neighbor for us when I was little.” They’d been there for Kelsey, and her mom before her, and they’d been there for their neighbors even now. Until they’d died.
She sighed as that loss rolled through her, freshly sharp.
“You okay?” he asked.
“Yeah. Just thinking about the Turners.”
Now he sighed. “I’m sorry I didn’t get there in time to save them.”
“You have nothing to apologize for. I told you, what you did was heroic. Anyway, the paramedics said they were in full rigor, so they were gone well before my dad asked you to check.”
“Yeah, I guess.” He was quiet for a while before he added, “How’s your friend doing?”
“Maisie? Not great. But well enough, I guess.” She hadn’t seen her friend since the funeral, though they’d texted at least a little every day. Having lost their matriarch and patriarch together during the Christmas holidays, the Turner/Crane family had hunkered down. “I think she and her family just need to survive the holiday and then they can start the real process of grieving and healing. Right now, I think on top of everything else, the fact that it happened at Christmas is drowning the rest of it out. Maisie said she feels insulted.”
“Insulted? By who?”
“I don’t know. God, maybe. Or life, or the storm. It destroyed Christmas in their family forever. At least, that’s how she feels now. But grief fades over time.”
“It doesn’t fade,” he said. “It’s more like everything else in you kind of stretches out over time, the way a rubber band loosens when it’s been under pressure for a long time. It gets … I don’t know. More comfortable, I guess. Starts to make room for the rest of life. But if it cuts deep enough when it’s fresh, it leaves a scar. Sometimes a bad enough scar that it changes everything.”
Kelsey turned and studied his profile. That had sounded as if he’d been speaking from experience. “You’ve known grief like that.”
He turned to her, just a glance before he focused on the road again, but he didn’t respond. Instead, he nodded toward the windshield. “Look. Christmas snow.”
She turned her attention to the road and saw flakes in the headlight beams. Not dancing in the light the way flurries did, but slanting downward in a line. Fat flakes.
The forecast had called for a fifty-fifty chance of snow during the night, with possible accumulation of three inches. It wasn’t supposed to happen until after midnight, however. After Christmas.
“I hope it sticks,” she said and shrugged deeper into her coat.
~oOo~
Despite Dex’s expressed desire to talk, he did very little of it on the drive. Once he’d pointed out the snow, he’d been monosyllabic thereafter. Not uninterested or sullen, just uncommunicative. Kelsey knew he was naturally quiet, but he’d wanted to talk, so she tried to do so. Eventually, she gave up and looked out the window, thinking.
She didn’t know what to think, actually. The past few weeks had been pretty confusing where Dex was concerned, and this quiet ride wasn’t clearing much up.
Finally they arrived at her apartment complex. It was gated, so she told him the code and he keyed it in. Her apartment was at the back of the complex, where her patio overlooked a pretty wooded area and a small manmade pond.
Her father hadn’t been happy when she’d moved out of the family home, and when he saw that she’d rented a first-floor apartment, he’d been really upset and had tried to convince her to get one on a higher floor instead. When she’d said she’d asked for the first floor so Mr. Darcy had a yard, Dad had tried to go around her and change the lease himself. Luckily, Mom had hipped her to that gambit, and she’d been able to get between him and the leasing agent before he’d gotten his way.
Overbearingly protective, that was Richard Helm where his children were concerned.
The apartment on the third floor, two up from hers, had a great view of the Arkansas River and the city, and a vaulted ceiling in the living room, complete with skylight, but Kelsey liked being able to open the slider in the morning and let Mr. D run out onto the grass for his morning constitutional. Her apartment was the only one in the whole complex that opened straight onto the greenspace, and the trail for the rest of the residents to enjoy it was some distance away. She had a private little garden, and she loved it.
Also, the complex was gated, and the greenspace protected by tall, dense hedges around the complex perimeter. It was safe.
Dex parked in a visitor space near her building, and they sat in continuing silence for a few moments. Kelsey didn’t know what to do. He hadn’t unfastened his seatbelt or removed the keys from the ignition; it didn’t seem like he intended to come in with her.
