Page 80 of Strangers She Knows

“She’s dead, isn’t she?” Rae asked in a small voice. “She’s got to be. There was so much blood.” She broke down and for the first time, she wept. “Why didn’t we know? Why didn’t we help her?”

Kellen sat on the floor with her, pulled her into her arms, and looked helplessly up at Max.

“We didn’t know because we didn’t know, and we didn’t help her because she didn’t want to be helped.” Max made his voice matter-of-fact. “I don’t think Jamie Conkle would have known how to ask for help.”

“She didn’t deserve to be hurt!” Rae shouted.

“No one deserves that.” Not true. Kellen could think of one person. But she wouldn’t discuss Mara with Rae. “Bad things happen. Sometimes they happen to people who don’t deserve it. Wondering why them, why in this place, why at this time—that doesn’t accomplish a thing except make you feel wretched, and we’re already wretched enough.”

That didn’t help. Rae cried harder.

Kellen thought about the men and women she’d served with who had died in a senseless war, about her own first marriage and the gunshot to her brain. She thought about Rae’s early years without a mother, and Max’s loneliness while she was gone. None of that was fair, either, and truthfully, when life was so uncertain and unjust, she felt like crying herself. So she let Rae cry it out.

Max kept them supplied with tissues, and when most of the emotion had been exhausted, he said, “If this storm is as bad as they say, we’ll have problems. The generators and wiring are old. If we lose electricity, our water and sewage won’t work.”

Rae looked up sharply. “It would be scary to be on this island all by yourself in a storm, wouldn’t it?”

“Yes, it would,” Max said. “The Coast Guard wants us to come in.”

Rae got up, went to the desk, got another tissue and blew her nose with great volume and intensity.

Max continued, “So we need to pack up.”

“I’ve gotta go to the bathroom.” Rae sidled out of the room.

Kellen watched her leave. “Poor kid. She gets so she likes it here, and we’re leaving.”

The front screen door slammed.

Luna barked wildly, a wild canine objection.

“What the hell?” Max strode to the window and lifted it.

Kellen followed to see Rae picking her bike up and heading down the yard and into the grasses. “Rae!” she called. “Where are you going?”

“To ride my bike one last time,” Rae yelled.

Luna barked, ran into the library, and ran back toward the entry.

“Be back in thirty minutes!” Max bellowed.

God bless the Di Lucas, the loudest family in the world.

Rae waved in acknowledgment.

As she always did, Luna barked her objections at being left behind.

Kellen went to the door and called her back into the library, knelt down and scratched her head.

But Luna was desolate. She went under the coffee table and rolled onto her side, and if a dog could be said to cry, she did.

Kellen wasn’t any too happy, either. “Max, why are you letting Rae go? If Mara—”

“I looked. No sign of Mara. Or Jamie. And thirty minutes won’t take Rae far.” His voice, already worried, grew stern. “I need to talk to you.”

Kellen hugged her waist and stood. She faced Max and asked, “What? Has Mara found us?”

“Not yet.” He corrected himself. “We don’t think.”

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