Meant to Be by Kat Bammer

Author:Kat Bammer [Bammer, Kat]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: KiloBravoSierra Press

21

“Thank you for taking the time to see me. I’m sorry for your loss.” Claire shook hands with Sheriff Travers as soon as they met just outside the sheriff’s office. He looked pale, and she could see the grief that had etched itself into his face.

“No, problem. Thank you. It was a long fight. Theresa was ready to go.” He shook his head. It was obvious to Claire that Sheriff Travers hadn’t been ready to let his wife go. News in town was that she’d had lung cancer for a long time. She died two days before Peter’s and Lisa’s wedding—the reason why the sheriff didn’t attend the wedding and why Peter and Lisa had postponed their honeymoon.

The sheriff opened the door for Claire and invited her inside. Claire hadn’t been inside a police station for a long time. And even back then, they had visited her in the hospital more often than she visited them at the station. Sheriff Travers led her through the open floor plan of the front office to his small office right at the back, past a very surprised looking Peter, who jumped up and stormed toward them, but stopped short when the sheriff closed the door in his face.

“So, Miss Gunterson. What can I do for you? What brought you here?”

Claire looked toward the door. Maybe this was a mistake. Her heart raced, and she rubbed her ice-cold fingers.

“Ahem. I want to—” Claire took a deep breath. “I want to make inquiries about my ex-husband.”

Sheriff Travers’s eyebrows shot up and he stopped for a split-second, before he continued to sit down behind his desk. “Why would you do that via the Sheriff’s Department?”

Claire’s face turned red. “Well, the officer who handled my case back then, he actually told me if I ever needed to, I should go through official channels.”

Sheriff Travers nodded and opened a small notebook. “So, I need his name, your name at the time, the place where you lived, and a date.” He looked up at Claire, and a muscle twitched below his left eye. “I know this is extremely personal and you don’t have to answer, but…what happened?”

Claire immediately stopped the replay of the events in her mind. Some people’s mind blocked out the bad, so they couldn’t remember, but that never happened to her. She could still recall the whole day her world nearly ended in glaringly bright colors… She remembered everything, until she blacked out. Claire shifted in her seat. “My ex-husband, Jeff, and I married right out of high school. My mother wasn’t”—Claire hesitated—“able to raise me, so I lived with my granddad for a while and was glad to escape the first chance I got.”

The sheriff nodded and scribbled something in his notebook.

“Jeff was pretty popular in high school, but he drank a lot. Then he lost his job, and then another one. Drinking was the only thing he did consistently. I worked as a waitress at a restaurant in the afternoon and evening and in a bakery in the mornings.

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