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“I know,” she said. “And never apologize for crying over the loss of someone you loved, Boone.”
He nodded and rested his forehead against hers for a moment. “Finish your story.”
“There isn’t much left to say. Mateo hated me and blamed me, and there was a huge part of me that did feel guilty.”
“It wasn’t your fault,” Boone said.
“I know,” she said. “But you know how guilt is. Doesn’t always make us rational. Anyway, I’ve done a lot of therapy to help with the grief and the lingering guilt, and it’s helped.”
She fell silent for a minute. “I couldn’t go back to the ER after Dianne died. I transferred to neurology, thinking that would help, but it didn’t. Just being at the hospital nearly gave me panic attacks. I tried to work through it with therapy and meds, and I transferred to another two different units over the next year, but it wasn’t… it didn’t work.”
“That’s understandable,” he said.
“I still wanted to be a nurse,” she said. “I still wanted to help people, but the hospital setting was no longer an option. So, I decided to work in private nursing or a doctor’s office. And I decided I needed a fresh start. Mateo was still… well, he wasn’t being shy about how much he hated and blamed me, and Rosehaven is a small enough town that it was hard for me to get away from it.”
“So, you moved here?” Boone asked.
“No. I got a job at a doctor’s office in Emerton. It’s nearly twelve hours from Rosehaven and a big city. I thought it would be perfect for my new start.”
“But it wasn’t,” Boone said.
“It was okay. It’s not like I thought my grief over Dianne’s death wouldn’t still be there, but I’d hoped it would be less, you know?”
“I get it,” he said.
“I missed my family like crazy, but not having to see the looks on people’s faces in Rosehaven whenever I walked into a restaurant or a grocery store was a relief. I worked at the doctor’s office for a few months, and it was okay. I wasn’t changing the world or anything with my nursing, but I knew I needed more time to grieve and process anyway.”
She’d picked so much at the snag in Boone’s jeans that she could see a small hole in the denim. “One of the doctors retired unexpectedly, the clinic got less busy, and they laid me off. My family wanted me to return to Rosehaven, but I couldn’t. Not with Mateo still there and not with the memory of Dianne dying in front of me. But I agreed to move here because it was at least closer to Rosehaven, and Chase and his parents were here.”
She made herself stop poking at Boone’s jeans. “I moved here, put my stuff in storage, and started looking for a job and a place to live. And then Chase told me about your nan, and here we are.”
“Here we are,” Boone echoed softly.
“Anyway, this is the first time Mateo has contacted me since I left Rosehaven, but I’m not surprised.”
“Why?” Boone asked.
“The second anniversary of Dianne’s death is coming up. I imagine it triggered him like the first anniversary did.”
“What did he do at the first anniversary?” Boone asked.
She hesitated, and Boone squeezed her lightly. “Tell me, little lamb.”
“He started texting me, asking how it felt to be living my life while Dianne was turning to dust, shit like that,” she said.
“Fuck,” Boone said.
“He was hurting,” she said. “He didn’t know how to deal with his grief. He ramped up the trash talk about me around town, and he…”
“He what?” Boone asked.
“He spray painted the word killer across the door of the house I was renting at the time.”
“Holy fuck,” Boone said. “What did the police say?”
“I didn’t go to them. I had no proof it was him.”
“Hedra,” Boone said, “you still should have -”
