“Why?” Her gaze hopped between men. “Why now?”
“You know why,” Brock replied, rising from the sofa. He stood in front of her with his arm extended. “Come on, baby. Let’s get some rest. Tomorrow, we’ll go explore and see what’s changed and what will forever remain the same.”
She placed her hand in his and he pulled her to him. When she landed against his chest, she caught a glimpse of another picture on the credenza. The photo left her teary-eyed. Pushing away from Brock, she slowly approached the piece of recently polished furniture and picked up the eight-by-ten frame.
“How’d this get here?” she asked, realizing an accusation was thick in her tone.
“Beats me,” Rory replied.
“I haven’t seen it,” Brock admitted, peering over her shoulder.
Trixie shook the picture in their direction. “I haven’t either, but I remember when it was taken. It was the day before Stephen kidnapped me.”
Brock and Rory leaned in closer. Trixie felt a suffocating sensation and quickly grabbed hold of the credenza, processing what this might potentially mean.
“He’s been here,” Trixie said, glancing around the office for anything else that might be inconspicuously out of place.
“Who’s been here?”
“Don’t do that,” Trixie said, shaking her finger at him. “If you haven’t seen this picture—and Rory hasn’t—then that can only mean one thing.”
“Hang on there a second, baby,” Brock said. “Just because this is here doesn’t mean Mitch is the one who developed the film and had the picture framed.”
“Who else would bother?”
“Perhaps Bertie? She and Claude spend a lot of time here. They had high hopes Mitch would one day return and reopen the camp.”
“Call her.” Trixie marched to the desk and picked up the receiver. “Call her right now.”
“Honey, it’s late,” Brock said.
“He’s right, Trixie.” Rory cupped her neck and peered around her shoulder as if he were looking down on a small child. She loved that.
Sometimes.
At the moment, she felt as if they were handling her with kid gloves, and she didn’t appreciate it. She wasn’t the same naïve young woman who’d once arrived at Cow Camp with dreams of meeting a handsome counselor who would eventually sweep her off her feet.
She’d captured prince charming, two of them to be exact. Three, if she wanted to reminisce and remember precisely the way things had been that first and last summer the four of them had spent together.
Her eyes averted and she focused on that precious image they painted. Mitch had her cradled in his arms. Brock and Rory were on either side of him.
“The four of us look happy here. We were good together, Brock,” she said, willing him to remember.
He flinched. “We were happy, baby.”
“We were young, wild, free, and hopelessly in love.”
“That’s right,” Rory agreed. “We were.”
“That’s right,” she whispered. “Until we weren’t.”
Chapter Nine
She insisted on showering by herself and that alone was enough to put Brock on alert. He marched down the hall and Rory followed him.
“This was a bad idea,” Rory said, squeezing by a number of boxes blocking the door to what was once Mitch’s private pad.
“Something is definitely off.” Brock slung one arm behind his back to caution Rory. Then, he used his foot to nudge open the door leading to Mitch’s apartment.
“What is it?” Rory asked, keeping his voice low.
Brock stilled. “If I knew that, I wouldn’t have warned you to stay back without offering an explanation, now would I?”
Rory peered around his shoulders. “Do you think Mitch has been here?”
Brock guardedly entered Mitch’s private quarters and flipped the light switch. The whole room was in complete disarray. While extravagantly appointed, the apartment hadn’t changed much since the last time they’d been there. Stacks of paperwork were shoved under the coffee table. Dated camp applications had been tossed haphazardly into a wooden bin.
At best the place looked clutter-fucked.
“What’s wrong?” Rory asked. “Everything seems perfectly normal to me.”
Brock walked inside and took a seat on the end of the sofa. He paid attention to particulars. The ashtray was stuffed with cigarettes smoked down to the filters. The wastebasket was crammed full with beer cans.
The dead giveaway was the new pack of batteries next to the television remote. Mitch never changed the batteries in anything. He would buy replacements and leave the unopened boxes on the coffee table in hopes someone else would take to task changing out the old for the new.