to say how opposite you two were. She’d be bored out of her skull sitting here staring at nothing, wouldn’t she?”
“She could watch the waves on the other side of the island for hours, like a movie marathon,” Rachel said quietly, a wistful smile in her voice. “She claimed to love the drama. So fitting for her.”
“And you crave the peace,” Cale said.
Apparently uncomfortable with the personal turn, she stiffened her shoulders.
“Why aren’t you on your way home?” Rachel asked, the wistfulness gone completely.
“I brought you this.” He held her purse out between them.
Rachel frowned, as if upset she hadn’t even realized it was missing yet, and took it from him. “Thanks.”
“Your mom got called in right after you left, otherwise I would have had her take it home.”
“I saw her hurry past to the parking lot. I hope everything’s okay with her patients.”
“She didn’t say, but if I had to guess...”
Rachel nodded. “Probably not, if she got called in.”
“The publicity committee—of which you’re now one fourth—is supposed to meet Sunday afternoon at two to go over our next step.”
“I’ll have to miss it. I’m working a double.” There was no regret in her voice.
“Another double?”
“They schedule me for night shifts exclusively—I’m guessing because I’m the newbie. Most nights, there’s not much action. I could probably squeeze in a nap here and there if I were the type. If I don’t take extra shifts, my brain is going to rot away from lack of action and I’ll forget everything I learned in med school.”
“If you work yourself to exhaustion, your brain won’t work right, anyway.”
She didn’t respond, and the noises of the night began to filter into Cale’s brain in the quiet. There was a slosh of water just south of them, probably a fish beneath the dock at the Lug Nut Bar. A frog had taken up residence somewhere nearby, singing his heart out, looking for a girlfriend or whatever it was amphibians did when the lights went out. Then he noticed Rachel’s index finger rhythmically scraping over the wooden arm of the chair repeatedly. It was a nervous action, one she might not even have been aware of, but after several seconds of it, it seemed to cut into the night’s tranquillity. Cale reached out and put his hand gently over hers to end the sound.
Rachel stopped her finger at the first contact. Even more telling was that she didn’t move any other muscle, didn’t so much as look at him. Tension came off her in waves.
“I know that was hard,” Cale said, nodding his head vaguely to the building behind them. He noticed the roughness in his own voice. “Sitting through that...”
“It wasn’t hard. It was...fine.”
“The meeting was fine,” he repeated, stunned at the blatant untruth. “Then why did you leave early?”
Several seconds ticked past before she replied. “I needed air.”
“It gets easier, Rachel. Takes a couple of meetings, but eventually it gets better.”
He waited for her to say something, but the frog was the only one to make a noise.
He tried again, unsure why he was pushing the matter. “You will get to the point where you’re no longer sitting there, shell-shocked, thinking how fundamentally wrong it is to be planning a memorial anything for a woman who was so alive. So damn full of life.”
“Right. Sure.” Rachel pulled her hand from under his and didn’t even bother to try to sound convinced.
“The meetings turn into something to do,” he continued. “A list of somethings that need to be accomplished, so you won’t always be thinking so hard about the reality, the enormity of what that concert on the beach really signifies.”
She bolted out of her chair—as much as bolting out of an Adirondack was possible—and took four steps to the edge of the shore. Arms crossed, her back to him, she searched across the bay for who knew what. Obviously, he’d pushed too far, rattled on to put her at ease too much, but when you got down to it, he’d barely said anything of substance, barely scratched the surface.
It struck him as odd—concerning, even—that she was so resistant to any talk of her sister. Almost as if she wore a hard shell over her skin so that everything he said just bounced off. Almost.
“It’s late,” Rachel said tightly. “I’m gonna go home.” With a self-conscious glance at him, she took off up the path toward the parking lot. “Thanks for bringing me my purse,” she added over her shoulder.
Cale opened his mouth to say