Hidden Falls (13 page)

“You should go home and go to bed.” The weight of her aunt’s dismay shot pain through Lauren as well. “You don’t need to stay, do you?”

“There’s nothing left for me to do,” Sylvia said. “The caterer’s crew will finish up.”

“That’s what I said.” Nicole flashed Lauren a look.

“I saw Ethan in the foyer a few minutes ago,” Sylvia said to Nicole. “Maybe he’s waiting for you.”

“I don’t know why he would be,” Nicole said.

“Don’t you?” Lauren taunted.

“Quinn was so glad the two of you came,” Sylvia said. “I’m sorry he didn’t get to see you sitting together.”

The moment thickened. Lauren had a hard time breathing. Ethan and Nicole had known Quinn far better than Lauren had when they were teenagers—and they’d had each other. Jealousy washed through her.

Nicole rolled her eyes. “Fine. Just to suit the two of you, I will go say good night to Ethan.” She took her purse and crossed the banquet room.

Lauren saw the slope of Sylvia’s shoulders fall as, silent, the two of them watched Nicole’s swift progress. Was it possible for a person to look a year older in just one evening?

“Go home, Aunt Sylvia.” Lauren reached out and squeezed her aunt’s hand. “Try to get some sleep.”

“I’ll take you home first,” Sylvia said.

“No. I think I want to walk.”

“It’s late for walking, Lauren. Past ten thirty.”

“I already changed my shoes.” Lauren held up one foot. “I’ll get the pepper spray out of my bag and make sure it’s in my hand. Promise.”

“Okay. But don’t stay much longer. Let the caterer do her job. She gets nervous about people who aren’t on the payroll handling her dishes.”

Lauren watched her aunt stop to thank the caterer and smile at the waitstaff. Sylvia could hold herself together in a crisis, but Lauren was sorry she had to showcase that particular character trait tonight.

Sylvia and Quinn. Quinn and Sylvia. People in Hidden Falls could hardly say one name without the other.

Lauren’s turn to put on a good face would come tomorrow morning at Our Savior Community Church. Quinn didn’t even like recognition for everything he did for the congregation—like organizing next week’s health fair. News would spread overnight to anyone who wasn’t present for the banquet. And if Quinn didn’t appear in the morning to make the health fair announcement at church, Lauren would have to bluff her way through it. No one would be listening to the pastor’s sermon that followed. Quinn’s absence would have people whispering and wondering.

Walking briskly would burn through the energy amassing in Lauren’s muscles for the last two and a half hours. No matter what the time, she knew she wasn’t going to sleep anytime soon if she didn’t discharge the concern creeping through her body. The humor she had first seen in the empty spotlight had dissipated hours ago. Anticipation for the antics Quinn might have planned morphed into apprehension. Even if he was physically safe, what must be his mental state to make him do the unthinkable?

Lauren didn’t require words to pray. She needed movement. She would move hard and pray hard all the way home.

Tossing the tablecloth in her lap onto the heap against the wall, Lauren stood and paced to the ledge where she had left her bag. She looped it across her shoulders and took out the pepper spray, something she carried so she could honestly tell her anxious mother that she did. The waitstaff had dispatched their cleanup tasks with efficiency and now rolled one cart after another into the kitchen on the far side of the hall. Through the open door, Lauren heard water running and dishes rattling. She lifted a hand to wave at Zeke and wondered if she would see him in church the next morning.

Lauren didn’t expect to find Nicole and Ethan still in the foyer. The lights, perhaps on a timer, had dimmed. With her hands behind her back, Nicole leaned on the push bar of one door, as if any second she planned to put her weight into the motion and make her exit.

“You’re still here,” Lauren said.

A look passed between Nicole and Ethan. Lauren stifled a smile. Something good might yet come out of this evening.

“We got to talking,” Nicole said.

“Don’t let me interrupt,” Lauren said. One day Nicole and Ethan could joke with Quinn that if he hadn’t made his secret escape they wouldn’t have gotten together.

That is, if Quinn had made a secret escape, and if, given enough time, anyone could find the humor in it.

“I’d better get going.” Lauren adjusted the strap that crossed her chest.

“Are you sure you should walk?” Nicole said.

“Positive.” Lauren had never been one for praying on her knees. “I live on Main Street, above the barbershop. It’s not that far.”

“I guess it’s all relative to how much you’re used to walking,” Ethan said.

Lauren could do it in thirty minutes, especially if she took a shortcut or two, but tonight she was more likely to lengthen the walk than concern herself with efficiency.

“Church tomorrow is at nine thirty,” Lauren said, “in case you’re interested.”

Ethan smiled politely. “No thanks.”

“Maybe.” Nicole pushed on the bar behind her at last.

The trio stepped into the night, where the security light on the pole above threw radiance around them while its glare deepened the blackness beyond.

“Well, good night. It was nice to see you both.” Lauren maneuvered past Nicole and Ethan, since neither of them seemed inclined to move beyond the sidewalk.

11:14 p.m.

“How did we end up being the last ones here?” Glad for its warmth, Nicole pulled out her coat, draped it around her shoulders, and let the car door close softly behind her. She should have been on her way home—or in the old house getting ready for bed—by now. Instead, she leaned against her vehicle and raised her eyes to meet Ethan Jordan’s.

Ten years.

Nicole had not seen Ethan or Quinn in that time, and in one evening her heart ached for them both. She couldn’t see through Ethan’s eyes the way she used to. He protected whatever was inside him now. And Quinn. A gasp slid past Nicole’s lips.

“What is it?” Ethan said.

“I don’t know what I was thinking,” she said. “I always meant to come back to Hidden Falls for a real visit. Scooting in and out of town for Christmas with my dad or a Father’s Day lunch doesn’t count.”

“You’re way ahead of me.” Ethan leaned against her car beside her.

Nicole inhaled deeply and pushed the air back out. She always told herself she would pop over and see Quinn the next time. And then her dad moved and there hadn’t been a next time in the last four years.

Nicole looked away from Ethan. It seemed like another lifetime, those years of living next door to Ethan and the two of them slipping through the fence to traipse across Quinn’s expansive backyard, leap the three steps to his patio, and knock on his back door. She thought of the time her editor asked where she would go if she could go back in time for a day. Nicole would choose one of those days, one of those exquisite moments perfectly cradling the weariness of two lonely children and calling to the wholeness deep within them.

“I don’t even want to imagine the mess I would have grown up to be if I hadn’t known Quinn,” Nicole said softly. “I wish I had been more grateful.”

“Don’t use the past tense,” Ethan said. “You heard what Cooper and Sylvia said. No sign of foul play.”

“Then what happened?” Nicole slipped her arms into her coat sleeves.

“I don’t know.” Ethan’s hands went into his pockets.

“It’s hard for Quinn to be the center of attention, but I thought he looked genuinely happy to see people tonight.”

Ethan nodded. “I’m certain he intended to go through with the evening.”

“I heard him say he wanted to talk to you later.”

“Eavesdropping?”

“Occupational hazard.”

Ethan put a hand inside his suit jacket and pulled out an envelope. “It’s too dark here for you to read this, but it’s from Quinn. I think he knew I would conveniently lose the dinner invitation, so he made sure I knew he wanted to see me.”

Nicole inspected the handwriting on the outside of the envelope. Even in the shadows where they stood, she could see that the slope and shape of the lettering were Quinn’s. Envy pinged her chest, knowing that Ethan held something that had been in Quinn’s hands so recently—and that he had received a personal plea to attend.

“He has something to tell me.” Ethan took the envelope from her hand. “I don’t have a clue what it is, but he was insistent that I come to the banquet.”

Nicole buttoned her coat. “We know him better than just about anybody. And I think we know that Quinn wouldn’t ditch an event like this.”

Ethan shrugged. “We were kids. I don’t fool myself into thinking I know everything about him. We don’t know why he never drives beyond the county line, for instance.”

“No one cares about that,” Nicole said. “It’s just Quinn.”

“To kids, it’s just the way things were. Now I wonder what it means.”

“It doesn’t have to mean anything more than he has a happy life in Hidden Falls,” Nicole said. “We experienced his true character. He’s warm, compassionate, solid, generous.”

“People change.”

Yes, they do,
Nicole thought. Ethan had changed, after all. So much about him was familiar, recognizable. A habit rutted deep in her muscles made Nicole want to reach for his hand. Yet she stood beside a man she barely knew. She plunged her hands into her coat pockets.

Aloud she said, “You can’t just turn off core traits.”

Ethan didn’t respond.

Nicole spoke. “You can’t think Quinn would turn into a different kind of person—unless you think it’s something in his brain.”

“That’s always possible.”

“You’re just saying that because you’re a neurologist.”

“Some illnesses will make people behave in uncharacteristic ways. It can be the first sign something is wrong.”

“No. Quinn was fine. He
is
fine.”

“I hope that’s the case,” Ethan said. “But the urgent note, his disappearance. If these things are out of character, then the question is why.”

A chill shuddered through Nicole. “We have to find him, Ethan.”

“If he left of his own free will and in his right mind, he may not want to be found.”

“But if he’s ill,” Nicole said, “or if there’s even the possibility that he’s ill, it would be just like him not to tell anyone.”

He gestured toward the sky. “The night is practically moonless. We could look all night and drive right past him in the dark.”

Ethan was right.

“Well,” Nicole said, “it can’t be that hard for the sheriff’s department to cover the county.”

“The Quinn we grew up with didn’t leave the county,” Ethan said. “That’s what we know. We don’t know what he does now.”

Nicole huffed. “You’re nothing if not stubborn.”

“I’m a scientist,” he said. “Going beyond Birch Bend could be one more uncharacteristic behavior.”

“So you do think he’s ill.” Nicole’s stomach clenched.

Ethan shook his head. “I didn’t say that.”

“Ethan,” Nicole said, “if something happened to Quinn or if he’s ill …”

“One thing at a time. That’s what I tell my patients. Let’s not assume the worst.”

Against her better judgment, Nicole linked an arm through Ethan’s. “You were always the rock in our relationship. I could always depend on you.”

Ethan was silent, but he covered her hand with his.

“Until you couldn’t,” he finally whispered. “Somehow the hole inside me started to matter more than hanging on to you.”

Nicole’s throat thickened.

“Did you fall in love again?” Ethan asked.

“No.” The answer came quickly. Nicole had tried. The bearded detective who fed her just enough leads to keep her working on a story without compromising his case. The rugged landscaper who worked on the grounds around her condo building. The restaurateur the Internet dating service had declared a perfect match.

None of them was Ethan.

“How about you?” Nicole asked.

“I didn’t think you would wait for me,” he said.

“What?”

“Med school. A long residency. The stress is enough to kill a relationship.”

Trembling, Nicole withdrew her hand. He had found someone.

“When I started researching med schools,” Ethan said, “I heard all sorts of horror stories about the toll it takes. I didn’t want to take the chance of ruining the way we were.”

Nicole absorbed his words. “You didn’t trust me to be tough enough for our relationship to survive med school? Didn’t you know I loved you?”
That maybe I still do?

“I didn’t trust myself. I’m capable of immense unhappiness, Nicole. I have chronic, huge dissatisfaction with my own efforts. I always have to do more.”

“That sounds incredibly self-aware.” And it was no surprise to Nicole.

“Seeing the problem and fixing it are two different things. I couldn’t ask you to wait years and years for me to finish my training only to discover I wasn’t good husband material anyway.”

“It seems like that should have been up to me to sort out.”

“Maybe. I was too young and dumb to see that.”

“All these years, Ethan.” Nicole blinked back tears. “All these years of wondering how I disappointed you. It took me a long time to get past blaming myself, even though I didn’t know what I’d done.”

“Nothing. You were perfect.” His voice hushed. “You deserved a perfect life, not some poor jerk who doesn’t even understand why he can’t get along with his parents.”

“But I didn’t deserve an explanation?” Nicole’s voice cracked.

“Yes,” he said. “And no, I didn’t fall in love again.”

Nicole swallowed hard.

“My biggest regret is leaving you,” he said, “and second is not talking to you about why.”

“Now you can cross the second regret off your list.” Nicole pulled the coat collar up against her face. “I would have tried to talk you out of it.”

“I know.”

It was too late now. Their lives had parted ways. They lived four states apart. And though she had never fallen in love again, Nicole had stopped waking up every day with her first thought wondering how Ethan was, or where Ethan was, or jumping when her phone rang because it might be Ethan. She had a job, friends, a life.