Hell Without You

Chapter 8

"Clementine?" Donovan's voice radiated throughout the large, mostly-empty house.

She didn't put away the letter, didn't hide what she'd been doing.

"You're back." He appeared in the doorway, clad in jeans and a jacket over a thermal tee. After days away, his appearance was impressed upon her all over again – the sheer size and shape of him, the dark sheen of his hair and the way even his utilitarian work jacket couldn't hide his muscles. Most of all, she noticed his eyes – they cut right through her, leaving her feeling as transparent as glass.

"I told you I would be."

"I didn't believe you." He entered the room, still looking at her instead of the box open in front of her or the letter she'd picked up again.

"Is that why you moved back into this room?"

"I moved back in two days before you left for DC." His voice was somehow both softer and rougher as he reminded her.

"Right." Her own voice came out weak as she raised the sheet of paper she held. "You wrote to my grandmother – you had my address?"

She had no right to hurt because he'd never written her, but she did anyway.

"I wrote her. I never had your address."

"But she wrote that she'd enclosed it."

"She wrote that letter a couple weeks before she died. I guess her mind – her memory – wasn't what it had been. She enclosed something, but it wasn't an address." He reached into the box, sifting through paper before he pulled out a photo. "This."

Clementine blinked. "My third grade school photo?"

"The guys laughed when they saw it. You know, they were all getting these sexy photos of their girlfriends, wives or whatever, and the only picture anyone ever sent me was this. Had to tell them you were my kid sister. There was a recipe cut off the back of a turkey stuffing box and a grocery list with the photo, too – I think your grandmother raided the junk drawer."

He stared at the photo for a few seconds before carefully replacing it in the box. "I wrote her back, but there was no reply. She'd already—" He looked away, a crease forming between his eyes. "I found out later she'd died. I never knew she was sick."

Clementine's heart clenched as she pictured him waiting – again – for a letter. For her grandmother to write back with the address he'd been anticipating instead of a stuffing box recipe and an ancient photo. "Her illness came on quick. I didn't know either, at first. Of course, that was my fault – I didn't stay in touch with her like I should have. I regret it now and Donovan... I'm sorry I didn't write."

"To your grandmother or to me?"

"To you. Both really, but I'm talking about you."

His gaze was locked with hers, his mouth a full, unreadable line. "This the first time you've come back to Willow Heights?"

"I came one other time before – just for a couple hours – for my grandmother's funeral."

"Then I guess you didn't know where to write to, did you?"

"No, but you tried to figure out where to write me. I could've done the same." No one would ever have known. She could've written – in secret, safely. And he'd been in Afghanistan ... what could her step-father have done to him there? Her heart buried in regret, she tucked her grandmother's letter to Donovan back into its envelope and dropped it into the ammo box.

"I never heard anything from you, Clementine. After you left for college, I mean. Not a phone call. Not a letter. And you never showed up, never came home. I left a few months after you did. Got tired of waiting. Tired of living in fucking Shady Side. Guess I didn't mind it so much when I had you – never spent much time at home then. But after you were gone it was all rust and smoke and watching my mom shoot up and rot in front of the soaps on the local channels because that was all there was to watch – the cable kept getting shut off.