Page 13 of Deathtoll
“Let me help.” He tugged on the navy-blue sweatshirt that had the Hope Hill logo printed on the front in white. “I can give you a ride.”
Her torn expression killed him. How in hell had they gotten to the point where she was hesitating to accept his help?
“Kate?” He was begging, and he didn’t care.
“That was Captain Bing.” Her voice rang hollow, twisting his guts. “Betty died.”
He needed a second to place the name. “Your neighbor? Betty Gardner?”
Betty was a nice old woman with no family. She used to be a nurse at West Chester Hospital, then at the Broslin Free Clinic for another decade after retirement. These days, her volunteer work at church was her life. Everybody loved Betty, including Murph.
“What happened?”
“She fell and hit her head.” Kate shoved her phone back into her pocket, her fingers trembling. “I have to go home,” she said in rush. “I have to make sure her place is all right. I want to check that she doesn’t have anything on the stove, or any windows open, or…” She huffed out a quick breath of air, paused, a lost look in her eyes. “I don’t know. I just feel I should be there and do something.”
“I’ll drive you. Come on.”
She swallowed. “Thank you.” Tears sprang into her eyes. “Can you really leave right now?”
“I was taking a break from the paperwork anyway.” He hurried alongside her as she took off toward her office, the gravel crunching under their shoes. “You have any appointments you need to cancel?”
“I’ll cancel them while you drive. Let me grab my bag from my desk.” She looked at her scrubs. “I should change too. I won’t take long.”
She never did. She could be ready in the morning as fast as Murph, and Murph had learned his morning routine in the US Army Reserves. She didn’t wear makeup. No gel manicures, she kept her nails trim, a necessity for her job. No fancy hairdo unless she was going somewhere special. No fancy clothes either. Most of the time she either wore jeans or yoga pants with one of her soft cotton shirts that molded to her breasts, something Murph didn’t need to think about just then.
He always figured her minimalism originated in the years she’d spent shuffled from one foster family to another, with nothing but a few changes of clothes stuffed in a garbage bag. He liked her as she was. Plain when it was convenient, knock-out gorgeous when she did dress up, making his heart gobang-bang-bang.
Although, to be fair, she could make his heart beat faster just by looking at him.
“I can’t believe Betty is gone.” She gripped the tan messenger bag on her lap once they were on the way. “I talked to her this morning. She was supposed to come over for tea and cookies tonight, after work.”
“I didn’t know you were close.”
“She made it easy to be friends with her. She was always like,How are you, honey? How was work?Or,I baked you some cookies.I thought, if I had a grandmother that’s what it would have been like.” Kate blinked and looked out the side window. “It probably sounds stupid, but those interactions were so nice. Just…” She shook her head. “I was looking forward to running into her outside every day.”
Murph understood. Kind of. Mostly, he just heard that Kate was lonely. So why wouldn’t she come back to him?
He tamped down his frustration and kept that question to himself. As he passed a slow-poke farm truck, he asked her something else. “How old was Betty? Eighties?”
“Eighty-four. Healthy, other than her diabetes, and she controlled that with her meds. She had so many good years left.” Kate rubbed a couple of tears away with the back of her hand. “I don’t understand how she slipped. I raked the leaves from her walkway this morning. I should have told Emma to check on her.”
“Sometimes, people her age fall. It’s not your fault.”
Kate remained silent. If her stricken expression was anything to go by, she was digging herself into guilt.
To pull her back, Murph asked, “How is Emma?”
“In between jobs. She was dating her boss in LA. Apparently, against company policy. They got caught. Guess which one of them was fired?”
“That sucks.”
“It does.”
Was Emma moving to Broslin? Moving in with Kate? And then what? Murph’s gut tightened. Kate was just never going to come back to him?
“It’s good that you two have a chance to catch up.” He forced a less selfish perspective. He could be happy for Kate. He knew how much family meant to her and how hard it’d been for her to be away from them.
He wanted to sayI miss you, the words pushing against his teeth to force a way to freedom. But he’d promised to give her time and space, so he clamped his mouth shut. The conversation he wanted to have with her could not be had right then.Not the time.
