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Instead of answering, he just sat there for a moment, then put the car in gear and began to drive back down the long driveway. I stared at him as he drove, waiting for him to say something, anything about what I had told him. But he didn’t, keeping is eyes forward and pulling out onto the main road by the place I had envisioned my bed and breakfast and now was someone else’s to do whatever they felt like doing with.
I stewed in the seat, angry that he wouldn’t speak to me, but also confused as to where we were going. He was heading back toward Murdock, but he wasn’t going the way we’d come. There was a main road that led out to where we were, and then a back road that snaked back toward town. I had never been on the back road, though it was lined with houses and seemed nice. It was like it had been the original way out of town, and the freeway had been added much later, connecting several of the little towns like Murdock together.
I sat back in the seat for a little bit, allowing the silence to grow like a massive balloon between us. There was such a separation there, such distance even in the cab of the truck. He was just feet away from me, but he might as well have been a mile. With one hand on the wheel and the other with the elbow propped in the windowsill, holding his forehead and jaw with his forefinger and thumb, he had the look of a man deep in thought.
Yet I couldn’t think at all. Every thought that ran through my head was on the tail of another. Each thought compiled on the last, tearing me into a thousand different arguments and reasonings inside my mind. Maybe I’d overreacted. Maybe I’d underreacted. It was possible there was an explanation for why he would bring me there that wasn’t cruel or short-sighted. It was just as possible that he was done with me and wanted to end it in the most devastating way he could so I wouldn’t ever call him again.
Whatever the reason, none of it seemed to matter. The house was sold. I had to get over that. It was sold, and someone else had bought it. I would never have it, and that was that. My dream of a bed and breakfast was shattered, at least there. It was possible I might find another place, but it wouldn’t be as perfect as that one. It wouldn’t have the wraparound porch or the view of an old plantation. It wouldn’t have the tiny playhouse in the back that was a replica of the real one. It wouldn’t be the place I had picked.
After a little while, I noticed some of the buildings we were driving by were familiar again. Somehow, we had joined the freeway going the other direction, the one that I had come into town on, and were heading back toward the commercial section of town. We were close to the garage where I worked, actually, just a couple streets over.
“Where are we going?” I asked.
For a moment he was silent, his finger resting on his bottom lip, then he briefly looked over at me before staring back out at the road.
“You need to meet someone,” he said.
“Who?” I asked.
He didn’t answer, instead just turning the car as we moved onto another street.
That didn’t sound good. Now I was even more upset, more confused than I was before. Whoever he wanted me to meet, he didn’t seem to want to tell me their name, and immediately, I thought it might be the worst. Another woman. It shot to the top of my mind like a rocket, and I couldn’t get rid of the thought. It seemed silly to think that it could be what was going on, but if it wasn’t, why was he being so cagey? So vague?
My hands wrung together in my lap as I waited to be brought wherever he was taking me. All I really wanted to do now was take Leo and go home. Maybe pack my things and try again in a new town where no one would know me, and no one would bother me. Including attractive neighbors who wanted to help.
23
RYAN
The office building was only a few blocks into town, one of the first sets of businesses when a person entered Murdock coming from the east. I took the shorter way there, going down winding roads and cutting through the neighborhoods that made up old Murdock. My knee was starting to act up, and I wanted to get there quickly before it got worse. Also, I thought Allison was about to start accusing me of things that if she said out loud she wouldn’t be able to take back. I needed to show her what was going on.
