Page 142 of Vows We Never Made
My skin prickles.
Usually, the chief just glowers at me, unable to hide his suspicion and irritation.
Today, it’s different. His expression seems tinged with sympathy.
“Is this a bad time to see the Rollins?”
“Depends. You Taylor’sboyfriend?”
Fuck, there’s no good answer to that.
“We were—together,” I say carefully. “Why? What’s going on?”
He opens the door wider. “Yep, I guess you should come in.”
The sound of horrific sobbing only gets louder.
My heart drops into my ankles.
I don’t want to go in there.
I already know I won’t find anything good.
“Just tell me,” I whisper raggedly, not moving an inch. “What’s wrong, Chief? What happened?”
The old cop gives me another sympathetic look that scares me.
“It’s Taylor, I’m afraid.”
Icicles knife me in the chest.
I lick my parched lips. “What… what about her?”
Beyond Jim, I see a dim figure. Taylor’s mother, slumped on the floor in a ball.
Her hands are pressed to her white face, her shoulders shaking.
She was the one who let out that soul-ejecting scream. No question.
The one who keeps repeating “no, no, no” like an announcement for creeping insanity, even now, oblivious to our conversation outside.
The poor woman looks like a marionette with its strings cut. Broken.
Her rattling sobs never stop.
My stomach flips over.
Heaves once.
A heartsick part of me knows what happened, but I need confirmation.
I need to hear if it’s really the disaster I think.
The seconds between each heartbeat become years.
“Taylor Rollins ran her car off a cliff last night,” the chief says softly. His words go in one ear and out the other, leaking like cracked glass, my head too fucking shattered to hold anything in. “We found the wreckage this morning.”
The wreckage.
