table and touched Bree’s hand. Looking at her friend’s face, she couldn’t tell how Bree felt. That was nothing new. She was well aware of Bree’s internal walls and how she disappeared inside her thoughts. But right now, she needed Bree to stop being such a loner and share.
“Did you just leave it at that? You couldn’t have. I know you, Bree. You are always trying to solve things to find out the truth behind stories. What happened next?”
This is the moment, Bree thought. Either go forward and find out what he meant, or go home. Wherever that is now.
Looking across the table at her friend Cindy waiting patiently as she always had, she wanted to get up and run out of the rest stop. Cindy could call Judith, and she’d find a way to get her home.
She could disappear again. Write under another name. Maybe forget spicy romance. Write detective stories, instead. It would be so easy, just as it had been thirty years before.
The problem is, Bree thought, I’m awake now. And mad, she realized. Mad at herself, mad at Paul and his stupid secrets. Mad because she had thought love would be enough. Well, it wasn’t. Paul left her.
It’s time to get my life back, Bree said to herself. I’ve run away for too long.
Taking a deep breath and slowly releasing it, Bree smiled at her friend and said, “I asked him, What began? But he refused to say more. So what, I thought. Paul has secrets. I told myself that I didn’t mind as long as we were together.
“But now, I realize I should have asked more questions. I think I was afraid it would break our life open, and awful things would spill out. Things we had put in there together, and things we had packed away from each other. Maybe he wanted to tell me then and would have told me if I had asked what he meant.”
“That’s on him, Bree, not you. But if you’re right, he must have wanted you to know now. In this strangely weird way, he is giving you the answers he couldn’t give you then. Otherwise, why write the letters? Why send us on this trip? No matter what happens, our pact will be by your side through this whole thing.”
When Bree turned away, her face flushed, Cindy guessed what she was thinking, “And yes, even after we find out why you left, we’ll be here.”
“Are you sure about that?” Bree whispered. How would they forgive her for what she had done?
“Positive! So what, or where, did he point to?”
Bree took another deep breath before answering, knowing it was the beginning of the end, and once she started, there would be no stopping.
“I only remember where he pointed because I asked him what he meant. He said it was nothing, just that his life had been the pits since his parents died, just like the town. His face turned hard, and I was scared for a minute. I had never seen him that upset. He wasn’t one to show his emotions, so I wasn’t sure what he was feeling, just that it wasn’t a good thing.
“I stayed silent, afraid he’d erupt into some emotion I couldn’t handle. When I said nothing, he gave me a tiny smile and said, ‘give me a minute’ and then went outside to the stone wall.
“After he stepped away, I looked at the map, and where I thought he had pointed, I saw there was a town called Pittsfield in Massachusetts.”
“That’s a stretch, isn’t it? Besides, you said he mumbled. And you don’t know for sure that he pointed to the town called Pittsfield at all.”
“No, I don’t, but I am sure enough to try it. Besides, it’s in the Berkshires, and if you’ve never been there, it’s worth the trip.”
“Even if we don’t find anything?”
“Even if, but I think we will. I need to find out what Paul meant when he said it all began there. What began there? Paul never told me anything about his past life. At least not enough to piece anything together.”
“So, leaving places and people was something Paul was doing before you met him?”
“Appears that way,” Bree answered, standing up and rattling her keys.
“So this is not connected to why you left us?”
Bree gave Cindy a long look, slung her purse over her shoulder, squared her shoulders, and turned away.
Just when Cindy thought she would say nothing more, Bree turned back and said, “I don’t know. Let’s find out, shall we?”