Chasing River (Burying Water #3)(10)
“So . . .What have you seen so far?”
“Umm . . . Wicklow Mountains, Trinity College, the Guinness factory . . .” I start rhyming off all the things I should have seen by now, had I not sequestered myself while recuperating, both mentally and physically. I lost track of how many times I bolted upright in bed the last two nights, after a loud thump or car backfiring on the streets below. “You know, stuff.” I shove a piece of bacon into my mouth to avoid talking. The rest of my thrown-together breakfast stares back at me, growing cold. The fridge is full of food that I bought the evening that I arrived here, hoping to avoid eating out as much as possible. I’ve barely touched it.
“Stuff,” he repeats, and I can almost see the weak smirk touching his lips. “Sounds like a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity alright.” Gabe Welles never traveled in his youth, joining the Deschutes County Police Department fresh out of school. He and Mom didn’t even leave Oregon for their honeymoon, a fishing trip in the wilderness. To say he doesn’t understand my need to hop on planes and listen to foreign languages and see the world outside of Sisters, Oregon would be accurate. He tried to dissuade me right up until the night before I left, grumbling about how I wasn’t being responsible.
My dad sighs. I think he’s tired of trying to understand my decision. “We miss you here. The Felixes are getting fat and lazy without you to ride them.”
I smile at the mention of the horses next door. It’s been almost four weeks since I left home with one turquoise suitcase and plans to make a lifetime’s worth of memories. “Tell Jesse to give them a run.”
A deep chuckle fills my ear. It’s so rare to hear him laugh. “I’ll be sure to suggest that to him.”
My twin brother, Jesse, has avoided the stalls since a horse hip-checked him and he landed in a pile of manure that had yet to be mucked. We were eleven then and, if it weren’t for Alex, I’m guessing he still wouldn’t step inside that barn today, fourteen years later.
“Mom working tonight?” Dad was surprised to get my call at nine p.m. Oregon time. It’s still yesterday back home. Here, it’s five a.m. and I’ve already been up for an hour, unable to sleep.
“Of course. They need to hire more doctors. At least the new cardiologist they found to fill Aaron’s spot is working out well.”
My stomach clenches with that name.
After a moment of silence, Dad offers a quiet, “Sorry, hon.”
“It’s okay.” I quietly push the painful reminder aside. “I’m sure Mom’s heavier work schedule may also have something to do with a retired sheriff lingering around the house with too much time on his hands.”
He grunts in response.
“Is Alex around?”
“Trying to get rid of said retired sheriff so soon?”
“Never.” I smile. He’s been driving my mom nuts, leaving the kitchen splattered with grease and filled with dishes in his attempts at making dinner each night for her.
“Listen, Amber . . .”
“Yes, Sheriff Welles?” I laugh, knowing that he just rolled his eyes. I only call him that to his face when I’m on the offensive. Particularly, an offensive to his coming lecture. Not that I’m never unreceptive to it. My dad may have been hard on us growing up but he was always fair, his staunch belief in right and wrong a thing to be admired. That doesn’t mean I always agreed, or that sometimes I didn’t wish he would just not share his opinion for once, but it’s always been his voice in the back of my mind, helping me see through ambiguity to reason. My father is just one of those guys who can do no wrong, even when he makes mistakes, because his heart and his morals are always in the right place.
“Hearing about that bombing on the news, about an American girl with long brown hair, in her twenties . . . it scared us. The kind of people who are willing to do that sort of thing are dangerous, and you won’t even be able to pick them out of a crowd.”
The attempt to keep my identity out of the media was successful. All the newspapers could get was what the first witnesses could tell them, which wasn’t much since I was fortunately too shocked to make the mistake of giving them my name. The reporters filled the rest of the articles with the description of the scene and comparisons to past bombings. Talk of the city’s gang problem, extortion and retaliation shootings, the heroin and cocaine epidemic. The IRA. Or the RIRA. I don’t understand the difference. I do understand the word terrorists, though, and the articles mentioned that more than once.
I push aside my guilt for lying to my dad, reminding myself that my reasons are valid. Between their careers and the past year with Jesse and Alex, my parents have dealt with enough stress to make them stronger than most. Still, I don’t want them worrying about me more than necessary. “I’m perfectly fine.”
“I’m glad you are. I’m glad this American girl is, too. I’m sure her parents just want her home now.”
Oh, no doubt they would.
He pauses, and I can almost see him standing at the edge of the garage’s concrete pad, peering out over the three mountain peaks that earned our town its name, his hand on his hip. “If it hadn’t been for that man who knocked her down . . .”
“Thank God for good people,” I whisper, my throat suddenly going dry.
I haven’t forgotten about “that man.” In fact, he’s occupied my thoughts over the past two days more than anything else about that fateful morning.