Galen straightened, taken aback. "What? So somehow Carrie's wreck was your fault? C'mon, man--you know better than that. It was horrible, but there's nothing you could've done to change it. There is nothing anyone could have done."
"I still want to see the car, so either drive me or stop so I can get my own truck." His voice was low and angry.
"All right, all right," Galen said, staring at his friend via his peripheral vision. "We'll go to the yard. Just calm down." He kept watching, expecting Robbie to suddenly explode, but when that didn't happen, he focused on driving the ten miles into town and turning down Main Street where Clint's Salvage sat on the corner.
Once Galen had parked, Robbie stepped out and headed toward the building, Galen in tow. Robbie strode into the building and stop short at the front desk where Rhonda Clements, the secretary, sat. Although she was on the phone right when Robbie walked up, she quickly finished the conversation and turned her attention to him.
"Oh, hey, Robbie--what can I do for you?"
The way she averted her gaze told Robbie that she knew why he was here without asking, and it made her uncomfortable. It made him feel like the worst kind of coward because he was the only one who hadn't seen it yet.
"Hi, Rhonda. I want to see my wife's car. Could you tell me where it is?"
Rhonda gave Robbie a pained stare. "Robbie, that's really not a good idea."
"I told him that, too," Galen chimed in from behind, "not that he listened."
Robbie gritted his teeth and tried not to react. It appeared everyone else was doing enough of that for him. "Look, I appreciate you trying to look out for me, but this is something I have to do."
Rhonda and Galen exchanged glances, and Robbie folded his arms across his chest. If they believed he would just waltz back out that door and leave, neither of them knew him at all. He'd come for a purpose, and he'd stay until it was done.
"Can we get on with this?" he growled, fed up with waiting.
Rhonda shook her head. "Just go out that side door, and you'll see it. You can't miss it."
"Thanks," Robbie said, already moving that way. Even as he pushed open the door, Galen was hot on his heels.
"Robbie," Galen said, his tone more a warning than anything else.
Robbie glared and held up his hand as the two stepped out into the yard. "I get it, Galen. I know what you're thinking, but if this had happened to Beth, you'd do the same thing."
At that, Galen stumbled backwards a step, uncomfortable with the spin Robbie had put on the conversation, and while Robbie had a lot more to say, he took that opportunity to turn back to the yard.
Although the sunlight glinting off all the metal in the yard made seeing difficult, Robbie shielded his eyes and kept searching until he'd found what he was looking for.
Rhonda had been right: there was no way anyone could miss it, and at the sight of its crumpled body, Robbie felt his heart rate double.
"What the hell?" he muttered, feeling the color drain from his face. Although he intended to step closer and get a better look, his feet seemed fixed where they were.
"Why don't we go back inside?" Galen suggested, laying his hand on Robbie's forearm to guide him back to the door.
"No." Robbie jerked free and stepped toward the remnants of his wife's car.
Although the badly crunched front end left him feeling light-headed, the side was worse. It had been mangled, though in a different way.
"How could Carrie have gotten away without injuries if they had to use the Jaws of Life to get her out?"
Galen stepped up next to him. "They didn't use them. They found her walking along the road, Robbie."
The words didn't sink in right away, but when they did, Robbie slowly turned. "What?"
"She wasn't in the car when the first responders arrived."
"How?" Robbie whispered as he leaned forward and studied the destroyed metal, which looked to have been ripped away, and the damage wasn't something his wife could have done, not by a long-shot. "It doesn't make sense."
As he leaned closer, a ghastly surprise greeted him--the blood-stained seats. Upon sight of the large, rust-colored stains, Robbie gasped, his mind struggling to take it all in. How was it possible she had lost so much blood and still remained alive--especially seeing as how she didn't have any real wounds? Where had all the blood come from?
"There's nothing you can do here," Galen said, laying his hands on his best friend's shoulders. "Let's go get some coffee and see if the fish are biting."
Robbie wanted to answer but couldn't. He just kept staring at the blood, trying to piece together the last few minutes before the wreck, yet all he could come up with was that the minutes before didn't matter. Just looking at the wreck, he knew everyone was right--his wife should have died.
Chapter Seven
"Carrie, honey--we really need to come up with a list of people you want to invite to the shower." Beth sat on the couch next to her best friend while holding a pen pressed to a pad, waiting for input.
Carrie was staring off into space; she hadn't heard a word Beth had said. Carrie usually had a million things to say, but this morning, Beth had stumbled over trying to keep the conversation going.
"Carrie, hon, did you hear me?"
Beth set the pad and pen aside and reached for Carrie's arm. Sudden images of the wreck filled Beth's head. Gasping, she recoiled, shocked. Carrie, too, jerked away, her mouth open in surprise.
Beth blinked a few times, trying to dispel the nightmarish images as she rubbed her hands together, hoping she could somehow drive away whatever had just happened.
And what had that been, anyhow?
Carrie rubbed her arm and stared at the floor, her breath coming faster and harder than it should've.
"What was that?" Beth asked, her voice breathy and panicked.
Carrie refused to look at her or even offer any sort of answer. Beth started to reach for her friend but then lowered her hand, unwilling to risk another incident. It had freaked her out. She could see Carrie sitting behind the wheel, her body enfolded amid the wreckage as though she had been just another part of the car as her blood seeped out into the seat.
"Carrie, answer me--what just happened?" This time, Beth's voice was louder.
Still no answer.
Beth watched Carrie's face, trying to understand why her friend wouldn't even look at her-- she was afraid, and now Beth, too, was afraid. Her whole body trembled, and even though she tried to shove those images from her mind, they refused to budge.
"I'll be right back," Beth whispered and rose on unsteady legs, headed for the bathroom. She flew from the room and didn't stop until she was behind a closed door.
Leaning over the counter, she beheld her reflection: her face was pale, and her shell-shocked expression said it all.
"What the hell?" she whispered, turning on the cold tap and splashing her face. Part of her wanted this to be some weird dream from which the water would wake her, but Beth suspected that wasn't going to happen.
But if she wasn't dreaming, what had happened?
She stared at her dripping face and reached for a towel. Her mind was still whirling as she dried her skin and set the towel back.
"It's your nerves--it has to be." She looked back at her face, relieved the cold had brought back some color. The last thing she wanted was for Carrie to pick up on her stress. Carrie had enough of her own worries, starting with keeping herself and that baby healthy.
Once Beth had put herself together again, she forced herself to take a deep breath and open the door, refocusing on the details of the shower that needed to be hammered out. Normally, Carrie would have been all over this; she'd have had a guest list cooked up already, but nobody could fault Carrie for being distracted, first by the pregnancy and now by the wreck.
Beth slipped into the living room, intending to give her best friend a reassuring hug. Strangely enough, however, she found the room empty.
"Carrie?" she called, glancing around, waiting for her
best friend to suddenly pop back out.
Stillness.
"Carrie?" Beth called again, louder this time, thinking perhaps Carrie hadn't heard.
Still no answer.
Frowning, Beth started toward the kitchen yet found that room just as empty. As she moved back into the living room and crept to the hall, however, Beth glanced out the large bay window and spotted her friend sitting on the ground, looking down at her hand. Her legs were splayed as though she were five again and sitting the playground.
"What on earth?" Beth whispered, hastening her steps toward the door. What was Carrie doing out there?
Beth jerked open the back door and trudged across the yard. "Carrie? Is everything okay?"
Although Beth knew her voice had carried loudly enough for her best friend had to hear, Carrie made no move to turn or answer. Instead, she just kept looking down.
"Carrie? Are you all right?" Beth's tone was louder, more demanding.
Still no answer.
Beth rushed to Carrie's side, her hand reaching for her friend, but then she stopped short. Grabbing Carrie was what had started this whole mess, and Beth wasn't about to go there again.
"What's going on?" Beth demanded, planting herself before Carrie so her best friend would have to give her some answers.
Although Beth knew something was up, she wasn't prepared to see Carrie sitting there, one palm tilted toward the sky, a colorful butterfly sitting there, its wings slowly opening and closing. Frowning, Beth tried to figure out what was going on. Yes, Carrie loved butterflies--loved them so much that she'd done the nursery in them--but this behavior made no sense.
"Carrie?"
Carrie looked at Beth, a smile touching her lips. "Butterfly."
Her voice sounded so childlike, as if she'd never seen one before that Beth inhaled sharply, and she didn't know what to say. It was like her best friend was lost in a trance, staring at the insect. No matter how hard she tried to reconcile this woman with the one before the wreck, something seemed...different.
A breeze picked up and the butterfly flexed its wings again, this time fluttering into the air and away. Carrie watched the colorful wings until she couldn't see them anymore, her eyes filled with wistful longing to fly away, as well.
"Gone," she finally said and looked at Beth.
Beth glanced toward the house. "Are you ready to go back inside? It's pretty hot out here."
"Yes. I'll be there soon."
"All right," Beth agreed. As she started for the house, she looked back to see Carrie give the heavens one more plaintive look before joining her friend, and while Beth knew everyone had secrets, no matter how she tried to reason all this out, something didn't make sense. No, actually there were a lot of things which didn't make sense, starting with the miracle of how Carrie had survived in the first place. It wasn't that Beth wasn't grateful; she just wondered, like everyone else, how it had happened.
The rest of the morning seemed to blur past in a quiet haze as Beth focused on setting up the shower. More than once, she asked Carrie a question about whether she wanted to invite so-and-so or whether she wanted games--some inane question like that--and Carrie always said yes, but it wasn't so much the answers that disturbed Beth as the way Carrie spoke, almost off-hand and distracted, her mind a million miles away and not likely to return any time soon. It was troubling, no doubt, but nothing, really, Beth could point to as evidence something was wrong--off, yes, but not wrong.
Beth had finally gotten the guest list down when she heard Carrie's stomach rumble. At that moment, not only did Beth look down at Carrie's stomach, trying to believe such a loud noise had come from it, but Carrie also peered at it and set her hands atop it to muffle the volume. Carrie yawned.
"Wow, okay," Beth said, giggling. "I take it you're hungry." She pushed the pen and pad aside. "Why don't I go make us some lunch while you take a nap? You look beat."
Another yawn, and Carrie struggled to keep her eyes open and focused.
Beth patted Carrie's shoulder in passing. "You might as well stretch out, kid, and enjoy being pampered. After this baby is born, you're going to have your hands full and won't be sleeping through the night."
As usual, Carrie didn't respond, and Beth was trying to get used to the semi-silent treatment her best friend was using these days--not that Carrie had always been Chatty Cathy or anything, but usually she could hold up her end of the conversation with ease. Now, it seemed she preferred silence to anything else.
Once in the kitchen, Beth turned her focus to finding something that wouldn't take much to fix. Since there were no packages of lunch meat, she popped open the freezer and discovered a few premade hamburger patties she figured would do in a pinch. Without even thawing them, she set them in a frying pan and turned on the burner. As the patties cooked, she looked for buns, lettuce, and tomatoes.
Although Beth should have been sufficiently distracted, her mind kept drifting back to the images that had come at her fast and furious when she'd been standing with Carrie. No, she hadn't quite wrapped her head around what might have caused that, but what really didn't matter. Carrie was here, and those ghoulish images weren't real. If they had been, Carrie never would have survived, and the baby inside her would have died as well.
But that didn't explain how real the images had seemed, and how horrible they had made Carrie look. It sent chills down her spine and stole her breath every time she thought of it.
The sizzle of the meat in the pan snapped Beth back to the present, and she took a deep breath. Dispelling her thoughts was a good thing, actually, because if the burgers had stayed on that side any longer, they would have burned. "You're losing it, Beth," she said to herself, "Really losing it."
Grabbing a spatula, Beth flipped the burgers, forced herself to get the buns ready, and sliced the tomatoes. While the distraction tended to keep her busy, her thoughts still drifted to what she couldn't explain, and they probably would continue to do so as long as there was a mystery to be solved. Beth hated mysteries.
It wasn't long after she'd prepared the buns and veggies the patties had been finished cooking and she could put the burgers together and carry out the plates. As Beth set them on the table, she noticed that while Carrie hadn't lain down as Beth had suggested, she had at least leaned against the back of the couch. Her eyes were closed, and if her soft, steady breathing were any indication, she was sleeping.
Frowning, Beth debated waking her friend. She knew Carrie needed the rest, but she also knew Carrie was hungry. The stomach growls had attested to that.
"Carrie? I've got lunch ready." She started to touch her friend's arm, but at the last moment withdrew. She licked her lips and waited for some kind of response, but Carrie slept on, unaware of Beth's proximity.
"Carrie?" Beth's voice was louder, more insistent, and Carrie's eyelids slowly fluttered open. For just a second, she seemed disoriented. She wasn't quite sure where she was even in her own home. Then, slowly, she turned to Beth.
"You are still hungry, right?" Beth nodded at the plate with the burger on it.
At that, Carrie's stomach rumbled, making Beth chuckle. "I'd call that a yes. Why don't you sit up?"
Carrie eased upright. At first, she looked at Beth, but as Beth handed her a plate, she turned her focus to the meal.
"Thank you," she whispered and took the plate. One hand rested on her abdomen.
Beth sat next to her, and they ate in silence. Normally, they would have been eagerly talking about the future and the baby. Today, there were gaping silences that left Beth feeling cold. As much as she wanted to understand the changes in Carrie, she struggled. It was normal to be shaken up after a bad wreck, but this silence was suffocating. She shook her head, thinking of so many things she wanted to ask Robbie--questions whose answers might shed some light on all of this.
"Are you feeling all right?" Beth finally asked, breaking the silence.
"I'm okay." Carrie answered between bites. Her fingers stroked her stomach lightly.
r /> "Is the baby kicking?" Beth frowned and looked at Carrie's hand.
"Yes. A lot."
Beth down set the plate and touched her friend's shoulder. "If there's anything you want to talk about, you know I'm here."
Carrie didn't answer. Instead, she kept eating and staring just ahead of her at something Beth couldn't see.
Sensing all the small talk in the world wasn't going to accomplish anything, Beth turned her attention to finishing her own burger, hoping that when the time came Carrie would open up. As it was, Beth was going to have to really try to be patient and hope everything worked out for the best.
The rest of the afternoon stretched into one long silence that, no matter how hard Beth tried to break, she couldn't. She found herself growing more and more frustrated until she heard the front door open, telling her the guys had returned.
"Thank goodness." Beth glanced at her friend and saw that Carrie was perched on the edge of the couch, one hand on her abdomen, still staring off into space, deep in thought.
A few seconds later, Robbie and Galen slipped through the doorway. Although Robbie saw Beth first, his glance didn't linger. Instead, he kept looking around the room until he'd found his wife. That's when the hard line of his shoulders eased somewhat, and the frown relaxed a little and he exhaled the breath he'd been holding.
Without a word, he strode to Carrie, sat next to her, and drew her into his arms. Although Carrie normally smiled when he did that, this time she was stiff and clumsy at his touch. It wasn't exactly like she minded it; more like she hadn't expected it, which was odd because Robbie had always been that way with Carrie. It was a running joke, in fact, so Beth felt a new set of warning bells going off inside her--yet another piece of an increasingly strange puzzle.
As Robbie kissed Carrie, Galen slowly walked up to Beth and slid his arm around her.
"How did it go?" he asked softly, leaning his head against hers.
"There's something really strange going on," Beth said, her gaze meeting his.
"I know." Galen kissed the top of her head. "Robbie wanted to see what was left of her car, and I still don't see how she survived. It was awful." He kept his voice low so the only one who could hear him was his wife.