Sorrow Road (Bell Elkins #5) - Julia Keller Page 0,26

keep my eyes open on the drive over. The thing I said about being scared—that’s just drama queen stuff. I’m not really scared of anything. I’m just whipped. I haven’t been sleeping very well.”

“So you came all this way for a nap?”

That was a mistake. Carla shook her head. She sighed; she was annoyed. She spoke to an invisible witness in the room. “Same old Mom.”

“Look.” Bell leaned forward. She reached across the distance between them and touched Carla’s knee with two fingers. “You don’t have to tell me anything. Not unless you want to. You’re always welcome here, no matter what. You know that. But you can’t blame me for asking a few questions. And if there’s anything I can help you with, anything I can do or—”

“There’s not.” Carla’s voice was as blunt and non-negotiable as a DEAD END sign. “I just want—I just want to chill. I don’t know for how long. I want to move back into my old room again and just be here, okay?”

“Okay.”

Carla was plainly ready to change the subject. She looked around. “I kind of thought you’d have another dog by now.”

“A dog.”

“Yeah. I mean, you and Goldie hit it off so well.”

Last year Bell had kept a dog that belonged to a defendant. Initially she had been reluctant to invite a strange animal into her home, but by the time the man—now exonerated—returned to collect his companion, Bell had grown to love Goldie. Watching her leave that day had been an excruciating emotional ordeal. Many people had predicted that Bell would be haunting the Raythune County Animal Shelter the very next weekend, searching for a new pet.

But they didn’t understand. She could no more have replaced Goldie than she could have gone out and found another stubborn, smart-talking teenager to replace Carla once the latter left for D.C. It didn’t work that way. Loved ones weren’t like interchangeable parts. Love was a singular event, and every love was different. That was what made it special.

“I go out and see her from time to time,” Bell said. She hadn’t really addressed Carla’s point, which was a deliberate strategy. “Royce lives way out in the middle of East Jesus, but it’s worth the drive,” she added, naming Goldie’s owner.

“Bet she goes crazy when she sees you, right?”

Bell nodded and smiled. “Oh, sure. Just about licks me to death.” That was true, but the reality was—a reality she did not share with Carla—that with each visit, Goldie’s enthusiasm waned a bit. Goldie was letting go. Gradually, she was forgetting about the time she had spent with Bell, and at some point in the future Bell would be just another visitor, her arrival greeted with curious barks and mad sniffing and then a reassuring tail wag: You’re okay, the wag would imply. I’ve thoroughly vetted you. Feel free to advance at will.

“One of my roommates has a dog,” Carla said. “She’s sort of annoying.”

“The roommate or the dog?”

“Both, come to think of it.” Carla grinned. The grin looked good on her face, and Bell hoped it would last a while longer. It didn’t. “So you’re okay,” Carla went on, “if I just hang out for a while? Stay in my old room?”

“Of course.”

Bell waited for more, even though she sensed there was not going to be more. Not now, anyway. And not, for the time being, about anything that really mattered. They sat silently for a brief run of seconds. They were like two cars stuck in snow.

At last Carla said, “So what’s been going on around here? Other than the crazy weather?”

“Plenty,” Bell said. Briefly, she told her daughter about Darlene Strayer’s death the night before. She had mentioned Darlene to Carla over the years. Tracked her success. Sitting at the kitchen table in this very house and seeing a wire story in the paper about a significant case and how instrumental Darlene had been in seeing it through, Bell would tap the headline with a finger and murmur, “Local girl.” Hoping Carla got the message: You can be from here and go anywhere. Do anything.

“So it was the same road you’d just gone down a few hours before your friend’s accident,” Carla said. She seemed a little shaken by the idea.

“Yes. But I wasn’t drunk.”

Carla reacted with her eyebrows.

“Won’t sugarcoat it,” Bell said brusquely. When Carla was in high school, Bell had lectured her and her friends endlessly about driving while drunk or stoned. As far as she knew, Carla had never done