He hadn’t thought her absence would hurt nearly as much as Grace’s and Faith’s. He felt as empty and sad as the house.
“There was an earthquake,” Becca said.
Flynn came down the steps. “We couldn’t get you on the phone.”
They didn’t fool Slade. They’d noticed he was missing and thought the worst. “Is everyone else in town okay?” Slade spun on Nate. “Or are you just checking up on me?”
“Everyone else is fine.” Nate chewed on the inside of his cheek before adding, “We checked them first.”
The anger and fight he should have felt last night finally made an appearance. “And then did you run upstairs to my dad’s room to make sure I wasn’t hanging there?”
No one spoke, a sure sign that they had.
“I’m not going to do anything stupid like that ever again.” Not after inching to safety and staring down death. “You don’t have to worry.”
They looked at each other and then back at him.
“You haven’t been in your dad’s room,” Will said.
“You have to face your demons,” Emma said.
“Everyone seems to think my demons have been hanging out upstairs.” Slade heaved a sigh. “And maybe they have, but that’s not the only place to face them.”
“You look like you’ve been rolling around the vineyard.” Flynn grinned, perhaps sensing his friend was going to be okay, even if he hadn’t opened the bedroom door upstairs.
Slade told them the condensed version of what happened. “All I could think about as I walked back here was what you would have thought if I’d fallen. You’d have assumed I jumped, right?”
No one said a word.
Indignation sent him charging up the porch steps. “I need a shower.” He left them outside and went upstairs. At the landing, curiosity got the better of him. He opened the door to his dad’s room, took a deep breath, and turned his head to look at the closet.
His dad’s body wasn’t hanging there. The specter of Slade wasn’t hanging there.
His father’s clothes were still shoved to either side of the closet, untouched since that fateful day, but there was a pile of stuff on the floor. A pile that hadn’t been there all those years ago.
Slade entered the room. It didn’t feel as if it rejected him. He didn’t feel anything from the room but sadness.
He knelt before the pile. Flynn’s baseball cap, the one his grandfather wore before he died, was upside down, cradled between the sandals Christine had been wearing last night—classy, expensive sandals as beautiful as the woman herself. Inside Flynn’s ball cap was Emma’s diamond-and-pink sapphire engagement ring, a wallet-size picture of Will’s sister who’d almost died in a car crash, Becca’s first husband’s Purple Heart, Nate’s handcuffs.
An odd collection of things. Each item carried special meaning to each of his friends about love. Their good karma to replace his bad.
Although... Slade fingered Nate’s handcuffs. He wasn’t sure the new sheriff was sending the same message as the rest of them. Did he think Slade needed to be locked up? Or that Slade was acting as if he was handcuffed to this house? This room? His memories?