Page 134 of Hometown Girl

“I didn’t think so, but I didn’t want to leave town without at least trying.”

“You shouldn’t have been leaving town at all.” She smirked.

He tugged at her hand. “You thought I was guilty. I thought I’d lost you.”

“I’m sorry for that.” Embarrassment whisked across her face.

“Will you help me?”

Beth stared at the blank paper. “I’ll try,” she said. “But I can’t promise you it’s going to come out right.”

Drew pressed his lips to her forehead. “It doesn’t have to be perfect.”

Her eyes found his. “And neither do you.”

Simple words had never spoken so deeply to his soul.

Chapter Thirty-Seven

“Was his face long or round?”

Drew squinted. “Round. Pudgy. And he had freckles across the top of his nose and cheeks.”

Beth sketched, feeling rusty. “I feel like someone else would be better at this.”

“It doesn’t have to be perfect, remember?”

But it felt like it did. There was so much riding on this.

She listened closely as he told her what he remembered. Every once in a while, he’d get quiet, lost in a memory. She’d wait patiently for him to continue, praying this brought him the closure he needed.

“Have you ever told anyone about any of this?” She kept her gaze on the sketch pad as she shaded the man’s left eyebrow.

“No.”

The one word said so much. He’d bottled it up all these years, but he’d trusted her enough to break his silence. “I’m glad you told me.”

“I am too.”

She prayed he saw that self-preservation, not cowardice, had driven him to bury these memories. That lie he’d believed had robbed him of years of living.

Beth stopped shading the face of a pudgy man, young, maybe late teens, with a stout nose and thin eyebrows.

“Are you sure the expression is right?” she asked. The man she’d sketched didn’t look angry, but sad. It took a special kind of evil to harm a child—maybe Beth had gotten it wrong.

Drew took the paper and studied it. “No, this is right. He looks mean to me. You don’t think so?” He turned the drawing toward her.

Drew saw the man differently. Like a child might. Beth stilled, but before she could respond, the front door opened. Bishop still stood on the porch. It had been over an hour since he’d gone outside to give them some time alone.

Oops.

“I assume you’ve had enough time to chat?” he asked, hands on his hips, looking a bit disheveled.

“Bishop, I’m so sorry you’ve been out there this whole time.” Beth stood. “Come in.”

He shuffled through the door and turned his attention to Drew. “Do you want to tell me now why you were down at the station yesterday?”

Drew stood and handed him the drawing. “I remembered something.”

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