Read Online Ties That Bind by Natalie R. Collins - Free Book Online

comfortable for him. Sam chose not to sit but to stand, hands on her hips. “Why are you here?”
    “Because what happened tonight, what I saw, was so horrible. And all I could think of was you. And you trying to deal with it. And I felt like … I don’t know. I felt like I needed to be there for you.”
    “That’s nice, Paul, but it’s been a long time since we knew each other at all. This is my job. This is what I do. Don’t worry about me. I’ll be just fine.”
    “Well, I just needed to see. Wanted to check on you.”
    He had aged well, with a strong jaw and mostly unlined, still-handsome face. As a teenager, his smile had always stopped her cold and made her stomach flutter. Sam guessed more than one teenage girl had a crush on this seminary teacher. Back in high school, he’d been irresistible to her.
    That was a long time ago. Now, despite his good looks and apparent availability, she saw him only as a harbinger of bad memories.
    “I’m fine. Thanks for checking. But I’m really tired.”
    “Okay, I’m sorry.” He stood up and walked over to the door. “I’m glad you’re okay. It’s really good to see you again.”
    “Nice to see you, too.” She didn’t know what else to say.
    “Take care, Sam.”
    He started to walk away, and she remembered the mouse. But something made her hold back. She’d leave it for D-Ray. Sam stood in the open door and watched as he reached his light-colored four-door sedan. He turned back, waved, then got into his car and drove off.
    She shut her door and locked it, wondering why he had come. What point was there in going back?
    It was all unfinished business, but that chapter was over for her. Unfinished or not. He’d moved on, in a big way, and so had she.
    Which didn’t explain why he had shown up at her door late at night. Or why she had let him in.

 
    NINE
    Sunday morning dawned cloudy and cooler than the past week, sort of like someone had turned the stovetop down from a rolling boil to simmer. Sam forced herself out of her comfortable bed and into her running clothes, silently cursing this obsession that kept her from being lazy on just one morning—Sunday, the day of rest!—and instead impelled her out of her slightly warm town house and into the street and soaring temperatures, pounding her feet on the pavement.
    Heat roiled up off the blacktop and curled around her legs as she ran past sleepy houses and slumbering trees. She felt as tired as the world looked around her, but sleep was impossible. Last night’s discovery of the macabre slide show had played over and over in her dreams, and even with the sounds of Sara Bareilles in her ears, “Gravity” blasting loudly through her earphones, it just wouldn’t go away. She made her way up Fernwood Road, trying to dislodge the mental images of three lives ended way too soon, one after another. She ran just a little harder, breathing deeper, sweat pooling between her breasts and across her brow, wishing the entire scenario would fall out of her head and melt away into the searing pavement.
    Of course, that didn’t work. “You loved me ’cause I’m fragile, when I thought that I was strong.” The song reminded her of Gage. Love? Who’s talking about love? Another memory to haunt her.
    Sam shook her head sharply, taking a left turn into the Kanesville City Cemetery. Located in the center of the town, on the north end, it had long been a focal point for her, even when she was living in Salt Lake City. Houses used to be farther away from the eternal resting place, the gullies and meadows behind it a common playground when she was a child. But as with the rest of the town, progress had encroached on the cemetery, and houses now rimmed its perimeter, the living going about their daily business among Kanesville’s ancestors.
    It was a familiar pathway, the same one she always traveled. She paced herself and ran the outer perimeter of the grounds, not looking at the headstones and markers that littered the