Seaside Avenue (Cedar Cove #7)(5)

For a moment it looked as if Megan wanted to argue with him.

“Agreed?” he pressed.

His daughter reluctantly nodded. Glancing at her watch, she gnawed on her lower lip. That told him how close she was to breaking down. “Craig will be home any minute. I should leave.”

“Go.” He gestured toward the door.

His daughter hesitated. “But the bedroom’s a mess.”

“I’ll take care of it.”

She shook her head. “That’s unfair, Dad. I…I didn’t mean for you to have to deal with all this.”

“All I’m going to do is fold everything, put it inside these boxes and haul them downstairs.”

“You’re sure?” she asked uncertainly.

He nodded. The truth was, Troy would rather be alone right now.

She edged her way into the living room and toward the front door. “I hate leaving you with this….”

“Don’t worry about it.” He was more than capable of packing away a few boxes of clothes.

Megan reached slowly for her purse. “You’ve thought about dinner?”

So far he hadn’t. “I’ll open a can of chili.”

“Promise?”

“Of course.” Not that skipping dinner would do him any harm. Troy figured he could easily afford to lose twenty pounds. Most of that extra weight had snuck up on him after he’d moved Sandy to the nursing home. Meals became haphazard after that. He’d fallen victim to the fast-food chains; there weren’t many in Cedar Cove, but the few that had opened in town he knew well. Because of his job and its demands on his time, he often missed breakfast and sometimes even lunch. Then he’d arrive home ravenous late in the evening and he’d eat whatever was quick and easy, which usually meant high-calorie processed food. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d actually made a green salad or eaten fresh fruit.

With Sandy gone, he’d lost his emotional balance. Troy felt a sense of emptiness, a gap where his love for Sandy used to be. He still loved her, of course, but the duties and responsibilities attached to that love had disappeared. They’d represented a big part of his life in the last few years.

Sandy dead at fifty-seven—it wasn’t supposed to happen like this. He should’ve been the one to die first; he was the one in a dangerous profession. Practically every day someone in law enforcement was killed in the line of duty. He should’ve died before his wife did. That was what all the statistics predicted. Then Sandy would’ve been able to live comfortably on his pension for another ten or twenty years. Instead, his wife was gone and he was floundering.

“I’ll give you a call later,” his daughter said as she walked to the front door.

“Okay.” Troy stood on the porch and watched her pull out of the driveway. He felt so drained, it took an inordinate amount of energy to step back and close the door.

The house had never seemed quieter. Standing by the threshold, he was astonished by the total lack of sound. Silence reverberated around him. Generally he turned on the radio for company, or if he was desperate, the television. But tonight, even that seemed to require more ambition than he could muster.

As he went back into the bedroom with Sandy’s clothes strewn about, Grace Sherman drifted into his mind. Grace Harding now, since she’d married Cliff.

Funny that he’d think about one of his high-school friends at a time like this. And yet, it made sense. What came to mind was an incident shortly after Dan’s disappearance. Hard to believe that had been six years ago. Dan Sherman was found dead a year later.

Troy never knew exactly what had driven the other man into his own private hell. He wasn’t sure he wanted to know either, although he suspected it had something to do with Dan’s experience in Vietnam. The war had left Dan permanently damaged in some way. Not in body but in mind, in spirit. He’d become reclusive, unfriendly, refusing to share his memories and fears even with other Vietnam vets like Bob Beldon.

When Dan disappeared, Troy had taken the missing-persons report. Several months later, he’d been called by a neighbor, who was concerned about Grace. In her pain and anger, she’d tossed Dan’s clothing onto the front yard of their home on Rosewood Lane

.

Now, standing in his own room surrounded by Sandy’s things, Troy remembered the sight of Dan’s clothes scattered on the grass—and he understood the powerful emotions that had led Grace to explode in such an uncharacteristic display. A part of him didn’t want to deal with the residual effects of Sandy’s life. Just limping from one day to the next was painful enough.

His gaze fell on the pink sweater Megan had so recently shown him. He picked it up and buried his nose in the soft wool. There was still a hint of his wife’s favorite perfume and he breathed it in, deeply, greedily. She’d worn this sweater at Easter last year. Troy had pushed her wheelchair to the open-air church services overlooking the cove. Sandy had always been a morning person, even toward the end. He used to tease her that she’d been born with a happy gene.

Her smile was one of the things he’d loved most about her. No matter how much he growled or muttered in the mornings, she’d respond cheerfully, often making him laugh. He closed his eyes as the pain cut through him. Never again would he see Sandy’s smile or hear her joyful voice.

With a heavy heart, he carefully folded the pink sweater and placed it inside the box. He wasn’t ready to see someone else wearing his wife’s clothes. Since they lived in a small town, it was bound to happen sooner or later. Most likely when he was least expecting it or least prepared to deal with it. Troy would turn a corner and run into another woman wearing Sandy’s favorite dress. He didn’t know how he’d react to that. The mere thought twisted his gut.