Page 23 of Hello, Summer
“Did you?”
“He felt threatened by my success,” Conley said. “Like it was some kind of a crime that I wanted to pursue success instead of staying in Atlanta with him.”
Skelly shook his head but said nothing.
“What? You think I should have turned down a fabulous career opportunity because of a guy? Typical.”
He shot her a look. “I didn’t say that.”
“He could have found a job in D.C. if he was really committed to the relationship. But he wouldn’t even try,” Conley insisted.
“But you ended up not moving to Washington after all,” Skelly pointed out. “So the whole thing is a moot point, right?”
“No.”
She couldn’t explain to him how it was with Kevin, because she couldn’t really explain it to herself.
Instead, she pressed her forehead against the window and looked out at the passing scenery. There were no streetlights in this part of the county, just a nearly full moon overhead, lending a ghostly silver iridescence to the green cotton and soybean fields interspersed with acres of scrub pine and palmetto.
“What’s done is done,” she said softly. She saw a doe standing in the middle of a cornfield, calmly munching on the tender green stalks, and nearby, she spotted two fawns half-hidden in a clump of trees.
She glanced over at him. “Ever kill a deer?”
“Who, me? No. I’m a lousy shot.”
“I did.”
“For real?”
“One of my boy cousins bagged an eight-point buck one year right before Thanksgiving. My granddad put his picture on the front page of theBeacon.You would’ve thought he’d won a Nobel Prize. So I started practicing in secret—”
“Holy shit!” Skelly yelped.
She turned in time to glimpse something in the road just as Skelly slammed on the brakes, veering sharply to the right to avoid a collision.
It was an overturned vehicle, a gleaming black SUV.
The Subaru jounced onto the shoulder of the road, coming to rest against a barbed wire fence.
“Call 911,” Skelly said, fumbling around for his cell phone.
But Conley was already out of the Subaru and running. Oily blacksmoke poured from beneath the hood of the wrecked vehicle. She squatted on the pavement beside the driver’s window and peered inside.
“There’s somebody in here!” she called to Skelly as he sprinted to her side.
He flattened himself against the pavement, trying to get a look, then began tugging at the handle of the door, grunting with exertion. “It’s locked.”
Conley ran around to the other side of the SUV and yanked at the door handle to no avail. She could see the shape of a person inside, slumped forward against the shattered windshield, see the back of a balding head and a trickle of blood on a white collar. His arm was flung sideways, and she saw the gleam of a heavy gold wristwatch. She tugged again, harder this time.
“Hey!” she called loudly, rapping on the window. “Sir? Are you okay?”
No answer. She banged again on the window. “Wake up! You gotta get out of the vehicle!”
“Get away!” Skelly yelled, running around the end of the SUV.
“We gotta do something.” Conley protested.
“I already called 911.”
