Page 49 of Craving Silence

In the laundry room, I fill my basket with the damp linens from the washer and carry them to the line outside. The pulley system allows me to stand on the back porch to hang the laundry, moving the line until my laundry is softly waving in the cool breeze.

As I’m stuffing the last load from the garbage bag I moved it in, into the washer, I pull out a familiar tote bag and am instantly overwhelmed with grief.

It’s the bag I lugged back and forth to the hospital with Mom’s laundry. Her scent still clings to the nightgown I pull from the bag.

The soft ding on my phone alerts me moments before I see Rick’s truck clear the trees at the end of the driveway.

I’ve been sitting out on the porch, drinking a cup of tea while staring out on the valley below, since Roy and Omar left twenty or so minutes ago. I’ve been trying to get my mojo back. This entire week I’ve been pumped up, filled with drive and excitement as I worked around the house, but then I found Mom’s bag, and all that positive energy instantly deflated like a popped balloon.

“Hey,” Rick calls out as he exits the vehicle and climbs the porch steps.

“Hey,” I echo, forcing a smile.

“What’s wrong?” he immediately asks, leaning down and not fooled for a second.

“Oh, it’s nothing. I’m just having a moment.”

He studies my face for a minute and brushes my lips with his, before taking the old kitchen chair beside the rocker I’m sitting in. Then he takes my hand off the armrest and laces his fingers with mine. For a while we just sit in silence, watching the sun set in the sky, with as only communication our joined hands.

Until his rumbling stomach interrupts.

“I’m sorry, but the smell coming from your house is making me hungry,” he explains. “I haven’t even had a chance to eat lunch today, so I’m starving.”

Of course, I immediately surge to my feet. My mother raised me better than to let someone go hungry.

“Come on in. We can eat.”

I lead the way, hanging the fleece shell I’d put on when I went outside on the hook by the front door. In the kitchen I scoop some of the rice I was keeping warm over the pilot light and top it with a generous helping of the cacciatore that has been softly simmering on the stove.

“Careful, it’s hot,” I warn Rick as I slide his bowl across the counter.

“Table or counter?” he asks.

“Table, I guess.”

I’m about to join him there with my own bowl, when I catch sight of my laundry still hanging on the line. The sun is starting to sink behind the mountains and it won’t be long before it gets dark.

“I need to grab my laundry. I’ll be there in a minute,” I tell Rick, setting my bowl down before rushing out the back door.

When I walk in a few moments later, my arms filled with sheets and towels, I find Rick by the kitchen window, an inscrutable expression on his face.

“Where did you get this?”

His sharp tone startles me as he holds up the little silver recorder I’d found tucked in the bottom of Mom’s laundry bag earlier.

Chapter 16

Rick

* * *

I’d almost forgotten about that damn recorder.

A lot has happened since Merrick’s vehicle was broken into, and murder has a tendency to overshadow everything else, including the mayor’s missing voice recorder. It threw me off, seeing it sitting on the sill of Dana’s kitchen window.

My reaction may have been a little sharp.

“I meant to give that to you, but I guess it got lost in the shuffle. I found it under some empty boxes behind the garbage bin in the alley at the pub when I was rushing to the hospital one day. I’d honestly forgotten I had it until it rolled out of Mom’s laundry bag. I’m sorry,” Dana apologizes, making me feel like a fucking heel.