He gave her hand a sympathetic rub. “Nightmares?”
“Yeah, well.”
“Me, too. Offer’s still open for me to stay any night you want, or for you to bunk with me.”
“I know.”
“Or if you have a bad one, just call me.”
Now she rubbed his hand. “Same goes. Bill’s been great about lending me his car, but I need to start looking for one. Before I go back to work.”
“If you want help with that, just ask.”
“Thanks.”
She didn’t mention the insurance payoff would be a hell of a lot less than she’d paid for the car—already used and with significant mileage—minus her high deductible.
But that was a problem for another day.
“We finished packing up her room today. Nina’s sister and mother and I.”
He nodded, met her eyes. “I stopped to see her parents before I came over. The photos you helped them choose for the service are perfect.”
“They don’t blame me.”
“Because you’re not to blame.”
“My head knows that. Or it’s almost got that. But … I never, never imagined anyone breaking in here. Honestly, what did the son of a bitch get out of it? Even the car isn’t worth that much. If I’d put in better locks, or invested in an alarm system.”
“Stop.” This time he took her hand, held it. “Stop that. She texted me her boss sent her home—so we could say what if her boss hadn’t sent her home. We could say what if I’d come over to bring her some cold medicine, make her some soup or whatever. Plenty of what-ifs. But the fact is, nobody’s to blame but the person who did this. Nobody.”
Because she knew that, she nodded. And still.
“It was so hard to box up the last of her things, Sam, and take them out of her room. To go back in there alone, and there was nothing left of her there.”
“She loved living here with you. I knew I was going to have a hell of a time talking her into moving in with me because she loved living here with you.”
Tears rose into her throat, burned there. “You were going to ask her?”
“I was going to give it a little while longer.” With a half smile, he tapped the side of his head. “Strategy. I know we’d only gotten serious for a few weeks, but I’d been serious about her a lot longer.”
“She knew.”
“Did she?”
And in his eyes she saw the sorrow, as immeasurable as her own.
“Oh yeah. You weren’t a fling for her, Sam. It would’ve taken some convincing, some time, but she’d have said yes.”
“How are we going to get over her, Morgan? What are we going to do without her?”
“I have no idea. I think about how we painted her bedroom before she moved in. I only had this place a few weeks before she did, so Nina was here right from the start, really. She had that lilac paint in her hair, on her face by the time we’d finished.”
Morgan could see it, could see Nina, as clear as yesterday.
“And how she showed me how to plant flowers, and how she wouldn’t take no, and dragged me to my first Ramos family dinner.”
“Nothing like them.”
“She wanted to set me up with her brother, Rick.”
Sam swigged some beer. “Yeah, well. No.”
That teased a half laugh out of her tight throat.
“I remember the night she brought you into the Round so I could size you up.”
“We had tequila shots.”
“You did. And oh God, the night we made dinner. When I came home from work, she was standing right over there. The kitchen looked like she’d set off a bomb. She was wild-eyed because she’d successfully made the marinade for the chops.”
“It was a really good night.”
“An excellent night.”
He pushed more food around his plate. “You still haven’t heard from Luke?”
“I think, like my car, that’s gone. He never answered my text or call about Nina. Some people just don’t handle, or don’t want to handle emotional upheaval.”
She shrugged. “It’s good to know before things went anywhere.”
“He seemed like a really solid guy.”
“Transient—he was up front on that at the start. But solid in the moment.” She shrugged again. “Gone now. It doesn’t matter,” she said, and meant it. “He doesn’t matter.”
Before Sam left he checked the locks on the back door, as he always did.