That Night at the Beach: A totally unforgettable, heartbreaking and suspenseful novel (Powerful emotional novels about impossible choices by Kate Hewitt) by Kate Hewitt

Author:Kate Hewitt [Hewitt, Kate]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781803143835
Publisher: Bookouture
Published: 2023-01-18T13:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 15

CARA

The next week passes by in a surreal sort of normality, so I almost can believe it might last, even as I am bracing myself for something else, something terrible. Finn and Henry go to school, come home. Henry practices piano and Finn starts looking into college applications. I go to work, make dinner, remember how to breathe. My credit card works again, the next time I try it; it almost feel like some cosmic reset button has been pressed. Nothing bad happens, for seven whole days, and I do not take that for granted, at all.

Normal life feels like a miracle now, the mundane become precious. To brew coffee, to put out the trash, to have the greatest problem be finding Finn’s cleats… all these things feel wonderful, because there is nothing worse. I am trying not to let the unknown loom; I want to live in this easy moment, I want to believe in it.

Even the distance between Michael and me doesn’t seem like such a hard thing as it once did; I almost wonder if I’ve been imagining it all. Menopausal oversensitivity, maybe, or perhaps he’s had something of a midlife crisis that is now starting to pass. Deep down, I know it can’t be either of those things, at least not only those things, but, in any case, things certainly seem better between us. We are united in—not grief, not yet, but perhaps in fear, which we are keeping at bay, and in love. Love for our son.

Michael comes into the kitchen while I am wiping down counters and the boys are upstairs doing homework, the house feeling peaceful and still. He walks over and puts his arms around me, and I stiffen in shock at the feel of him, because it has been so long since we’ve actually hugged—a reminder that I haven’t been imagining it, but right then I just want to enjoy the moment, the sensation, for what it is. I press my cheek against his shoulder and close my eyes as I relax into him. He smells of aftershave and laundry detergent, and his chest is hard and solid and comforting against me.

“This whole thing…” he says in a low voice, cautious, hopeful, his arms around me. “It seems to have blown over.”

I nod slowly against his shoulder. “Yes… maybe.”

“Has Finn seemed okay to you?”

“Ye-es…” I sound uncertain now, because Finn has definitely seemed more like himself, if with a bit less of the swagger, the brash confidence, which, all in all, is no bad thing, but is he okay? Do we really just get to walk on from this, put it in the past, the end? As much as I long for that, it doesn’t feel entirely right.

“I know it’s not that simple,” Michael tells me, as if he can guess the nature of my thoughts, and he probably can. “For Bella, anyway. But if they’ve decided not to go to the police after all…” He trails off as we both silently finish that sentence.

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