Gale knew that Dewey was inside the damn trailer. She could hear him, the clanking of keys, his clomping, uneven footsteps creaking its ancient floor. Was he limping again? Not that she cared- right in this moment of her fury towards him, she hoped he was in pain. She hoped every single step he took hurt like a motherfucker, because if it didn't, she was ready to kick him in the shins, or maybe much higher up, to give him a taste of the pain she felt he deserved.
She gave the door several more hard knocks, not feeling the impact of it against the thin skin of her knuckles in the adrenaline of the moment, even as she expected him to unlock the door to let her in. But several moments passed, far more than even a limping Dewey should have taken to get to the door and unlock it, and Gale realized as she stopped to listen that she didn't hear him moving anymore. Was he actually standing there on the other side of the door, just waiting her out, thinking she would give up and leave? Was he even more brain damaged than she had thought possible, that he would think that she, Gale Weathers Riley, would track him down and then quietly go away without releasing all the things she had been storing up to throw at him over the past two years? Did he think she was so stupid that she couldn't figure out whether or not he was home?
Freshly enraged, Gale renewed her pounding against the door, hard enough that it actually shook on its hinges, even while locked. She grabbed the doorknob and twisted it violently, attempting to break it off, but although it jiggled loosely in her hand, it didn't give entirely.
"I KNOW YOU'RE FUCKING IN THERE, DEWEY! WHAT THE FUCK, A KILLER IS IN TOWN AND YOU LEAVE ME STANDING OUT IN THE OPEN IN FUCKING CRACK CIRCLE CENTRAL?!"
She punctuated her yelling with two hard kicks against the door, stumbling slightly in her heels but grimly determined. The door again shuddered against her efforts but remained closed, and that was when an idea struck Gale. On more than a few occasions, she had been locked out of her own trailer growing up, and she had used her school library card to pop the flimsy lock to get inside. This trailer looked like it was probably old enough to be made in a similar time frame, and surely, the lock couldn't be much sturdier.
Fishing in her handbag for her wallet, Gale removed one of her credit cards and jimmied it in the crack of the doorframe, wiggling it back and forth until she felt it catch against the lock and start to push it back. Within ten seconds she had the lock pushed back enough that she could grab the door knob and turn it easily, and the door swung open, allowing her to stalk through, slamming it so hard behind herself that the windows shook. Taking the couple of steps forward to be right up against Dewey, chest to chest, face upturned to him so they were mere inches from each other- close enough to lean in and kiss- Gale nevertheless did no such thing. Hands lifted up, she shoved Dewey, hard. Before he had a chance to react, she followed up the shove with her fists raining down against his chest with considerable force, punctuated with her flurry of words.
"How-do-you-tell-me-about-Ghostface- in-a-fucking TEXT!"
Giving one last blow, Gale lowered her hands to her sides, fists still balled up tight enough that her nails actually bit into her palms and her arms shook slightly with the tension her body carried. Blue eyes flashing dangerously, she continued to yell at him, her words bitten out with speed.
"You don't even speak to me, not one word, not one, even when I beg, even when I send Sidney after you, NOT ONE WORD, and THAT'S how you break your vow of silence?! You send me a TEXT- with a SMILEY FACE?! And then you let me chase you all around town, let me stand out there like a dope fiend after her fix?! What, is that what I am to you now, the equivalent of a cheap coked out whore you're embarrassed to admit you hired once? Is that what your current lay is, you're too ashamed to bring her to our home?"
As her tunnel vision started to open up, allowing her to gradually start to look at Dewey more closely, she realized with a start that he looked different. Actually, he looked like shit. His facial hair was patchy and overgrown from lack of maintaining, and there were deep circles under his eyes. Dewey had also gained weight; he looked older than her memory of him, haggard and-
"Are you DRUNK right now?"
No, she wasn't imagining that. She could smell the booze on him, even when she took a step back to scrutinize him more thoroughly. And as Gale's narrowed eyes drifted, taking in the trailer's interior, she was stunned at the amount of liquor bottles littering its counters, floor, and coffee table, as well as the empties overflowing in the trash can. How long had it taken him to drink all of that? Surely that hadn't all been Dewey….
But then she saw the picture, next to the silk box bearing Tatum's name. Their picture. Tatum's ashes, next to a picture of the two of them…those were not things Dewey would take over to a lover's home and casually leave sitting out. Their picture wouldn't be out at all, if there was anyone serious in Dewey's life.
As the shock of this hit her, Gale's mouth dropped, and she whirled back on him, her disbelief stark in her tone.
"You LIVE here?! We have a house across the town, and you live HERE?! There's a killer after you again, and you live in a place I can break into with a fucking credit card?!"
Of course that didn't work. Why did he think that was going to work?
Before he knew, Gale popped the lock to his door and rammed the door open with the strength of a bull; the rage of one two, it seemed. Not many people scared the seasoned survivalist and ex-Sheriff nowadays, but Gale Weathers certainly could - her eyes were ablaze with the hottest of blue fire and her lips were sealed tight in a thin line. If there's one thing he knows about Gale, it's her rage face.
When she stalked over to him, he was sure she was gonna shank him with how tight of a ball her fists were in. He knew deep down she wouldn't actually kill him, but damn if she can't kill with words. He braced himself against the kitchen counter and waited for the first inevitable punch, however he got a shove instead. The corner of the counter rammed his spine, and he couldn't help the small groan of pain that erupted from him, but he was given no time to process it when a flurry of fists batted against his chest.
"You live here?! We have a house across the town, and you live here?! There's a killer after you again, and you live in a place I can break into with a fucking credit card?!" she bombarbed. Dewey couldn't tell if she was concerned or angry. Probably both.
It'd be a bad time to mention that he never cared for the lock to the door so that one day some other teenager in a mask could break in and tear him to shreds while he slept on the couch after a night of drinking. In all fairness, he had only learned of a new killer this morning and - wait. He messaged Gale almost four hours ago, how did she get to Woodsboro so fast?
"H-how did you get here? I messaged you four hours ago. And for a matter of fact, how did you find out where I live?!" he babbled, his voice cracking at the end.
The man didn't even try to deny it. It was not even noon, on a weekday, and he was not only drunk, he was admitting it. Like it was normal. And judging from the state of his trailer and the bottles scattered through even the limited portion of it she could see, it looked to Gale like being drunk was indeed now a normal state of being for Dewey. He was actually LAUGHING as he admitted this, although Gale recognized it as his sheepish, self-deprecating laugh more than real humor. Even so, the sound of it only pissed her off even more. Absolutely nothing was funny about this situation, not one damn thing.
"Explain," she said tightly, her words dripping with the same ice that her eyes harbored in their stare. "You owe me an explanation, now. You owe me a hell of a lot more, but an explanation is the very least of it. I will not leave this shithole, a shithole that I cannot believe you actually willingly live in, until you explain what the fuck you're doing here and how you chose this over both a million dollar penthouse and our equally expensive home."
But no explanation came. Not even the beginnings of one. Instead, Dewey focused, as he so often did, on exactly the details that were unimportant, at least to Gale. Who the hell cared how she got there or how she found him? She was here, she had found him, that was all he needed to know. And that was all she intended to give him.
"Hey, I'm the one asking the fucking questions here!" she reminded him, jabbing a finger towards his chest for emphasis, enough to actually poke. "I owe you nothing, don't you forget that. You texted, I came, I'm here. That's all you get. Now you backtrack and you start giving me some answers. You made me wait two years and cross the country for them. So start talking. NOW."
Well, he's too far in now. Whatever else he tells her won't change the fact that she'll castrate him the moment he's finished speaking his peace.
"I'm not a real husband," he mumbled. "I'm a spineless man who leaves his wife without a word in the middle of the night. I was so wrapped up in thinking about what the people of Woodsboro needed that I thought you'd realize that I was just a waste of space and that you'd be better off without me there.
"I was wrong," he said, followed by an involuntary chuckle. "I always tend to be wrong in these circumstances. You needed me in New York and I needed you in Woodsboro, but I was too caught up in thinking of what I wanted to speak to you - my wife! Ex-wife now, I imagine," he intercut in.
"I wanted to forget that I made myself leave you, so…I turned to this," he said as he grabbed a lone beer bottle by its neck off the counter and hoisted it into the air before chucking it into a nearby pile. "Turns out the town's representatives don't like seeing their Sheriff plastered at an active crime scene," he joked dryly. "They called for my resignation the next day."
A stray tear trickled down his face, but he rubbed it off before it could drip off his chin. "After that I knew that even though I ruined any trust you had for me and the love that I still can't believe to this day that you gave me was lost, it was all for nothing. So I deserved nothing."
He looked back up and finally looked Gale in the eyes. "Now we're here."
"I thought you were kidnapped, Dewey, or dead. I thought you had gone off with someone else. I thought you didn't want me, I thought-"
She stopped herself, hearing her voice start to crack and blinking hard against the tears coming to her own eyes. Pressing her lips together hard in an effort to pull herself together, Gale turned away slightly, her head full now of images of Dewey alone in the terrible trailer they stood in, drinking, with no job, no friends, and no one he would turn to for help. As hurt and angry as she was, thinking of him this way, let alone actually witnessing it up close, was a whole new level of pain, and she grasped her hands in front of herself, unconsciously twisting them together.
"You should have told me," she repeated, her voice dropping lower, still speaking around the choked feeling in her throat.
With anyone else, she would have agreed with them instantly that given their actions, they were a coward, a terrible husband. But this was Dewey. For over twenty years Gale had seen him show courage, strength, and a strong moral code, and she could not let herself revise her view of him, even now, as a man who was a coward. Even now, she could not reduce him to that in her thoughts.
"You are not a coward, Dewey," she said finally, the words still quiet, but genuine. "You need help. Those are two different things."
Releasing a slightly shaky breath, she blinked back what remained of her tears, trying to meet his eyes. "But you're right, I can't trust you. How could I? I don't trust you, but I-"
And then she stopped, knowing even as the words came to her tongue that they were too much. Telling Dewey that she still loved him, especially when he had not said the same, would break the little hold of her composure she had maintained. Of course Gale loved him. She knew, had always known, that she still loved him, no matter what he ever did. She would love Dewey Riley until the day that he or she died, and probably beyond that. But there was no way she could stand there and tell him that now. Not if he didn't love her.
"Gale," he started, distracting himself from the overwhelming urge to touch her. "If there's any meaning in why I did what I did, it's for what's happening now. Those kids," he states, looking out his window in the direction Samantha and her boyfriend left. "They need someone to help them.
"I almost didn't want to, but...Gale, she looked me in the eye and told me her younger sister was almost killed last night," he sorrowfully sighed. "I just can't help but think if it were Tate-..." her named died in a deep inhale.
"I may be be stupid, but I can't let that happen. I won't," he finished. He doesn't believe her when she tells him he's not a coward, 'cause there's no other descriptor for a man who leaves his wife in the middle of the night with no warning, but he'll be damned if this kid dies because of his inaction.
Helping people. Of course, that would be what Dewey would focus on, his main concern. Not his life or safety or health, not his clearly destroyed public reputation. No, even after being asked to resign from the job he had always cherished, even while drunk, depressed, and in a darker mental place than Gale had ever before witnessed, Dewey Riley was still a hero at heart.
That means, she supposes, that he's not too far gone from the Dewey she had known to come back into himself once more. Undoubtedly a positive, a relief as well. No matter how much Gale hates what Dewey did to her and the hole it's blown into her life and heart, she nevertheless cannot stand the idea of him remaining in the state she is observing him in now. As awful as the return of Ghostface and the murders of still more Woodsboro residents is, it just may be the catalyst for Dewey's self resurrection.
"You always did have to do the noble thing," she said quietly. "No matter how stupid it might be."
She left unsaid, but felt lingering between them in her unspoken words, that although Dewey had always done the noble thing, he certainly had not when it came to their relationship. Gale is still struggling even after his explanation to absorb its meaning, not just in the words themselves, but in how she herself received them, what they meant to her.
Her eyes softened further when Dewey started to mention Tatum. Trust that to be part of his drive. Although he didn't often speak of her, she nevertheless knew how deeply the girl's death had affected him, how difficult he found her absence in his life even two plus decades later. Between Sidney, Kirby Reed, and now these new kids, it seemed like Dewey always found a new little sister to try to keep safe.
"You are stupid," she exhaled, but the words are more resigned than biting. "That's obvious, given that you voluntarily live here, in this living memorial of a Breaking Bad setting, in this psycho-spawning cursed hellhole of a town."
Exhaling again, she continued, "You're stupid, but you're probably right. You're the best person to help these kids, other than myself, obviously."
As if the matter was already settled and extensively discussed, she straightened, looking at him expectantly. "So what's our next step then? What do you already know, where are we going from here?"
We. Because of course, whatever he thought he was dojng to help those kids, she was going to be doing it right along with him.
Of course she wanted to help, he didn't expect anything less from her and there'd be no point in arguing, especially since she ignored the context of his message. Dewey had to admit, watching Gale's authoritativeness was, for lack of a better term, *very* attractive. With the tension having died down from its high, even if it still lingered, Dewey finally had the chance to really look at her.
Her blue eyes were just as potent as they were the first day he saw them in person. The hair she had taken to growing out in the course of the twenty-five years he knew her elegantly flowed down her shoulders. She was still thin, but a bit too thin from the last time he saw her. To any casual viewer, Gale's figure looked excellent, but Dewey could tell she was under what was healthy - he'd have to bring her out to lunch later.
Realizing the heat that flushed his cheeks, Dewey snapped himself out of his love-struck daze and told her what she wanted to know. "Um, well…the next step would be to find Samantha, the woman who came by earlier," he began, squeezing past Gale and to the front door. "I told her that the killer has to be someone close to her sister, so I assume she's starting there.
"I don't know where she went, but her car has yet to pass my mind, so we can go from there," he continued as he walked down the steps and to the side of his blue pickup. "I've already got eyes on her boyfriend - seems very shifty, and he's got an intense stare. Plus, when can you trust the love interest, right?" he chuckled as he realized the irony in the statement considering Gale's and his past.
He made it to the driver-side door of the truck before he turned on his heel with realization. "Oh, and, by the way…apparently Sam is Loomis' illegitimate daughter."
Gale was nothing if not observant, and she didn't miss Dewey starting to look her over more closely, although she thought his eyes looked somewhat dazed as he took her in. Watching him watch her, she raised an eyebrow, wondering what exactly it was that he saw when he looked at her. An aged, lesser echo of the woman he had once found beautiful, hiding scars, prominent collarbones, and much hated darkened veins under designer clothing, crow's feet under expensive makeup? She could swear that he was looking at her like he was attracted, and maybe he was, she guessed, even if he had stopped loving her or wanting to be with her. Hell, even with his scruffy appearance, the odor of alcohol clinging to his skin, and the weight he had put on over the past two years, Gale still found Dewey attractive. The difference, she guessed, was that as much as she might hate it, she still loved him, and therefore would have found him attractive in whatever condition he happened to be. Him having an involuntary physical response was not the same thing, and she wasn't about to let herself think otherwise.
She was further convinced of this flawed logic when Dewey snapped his up and down assessment of her and flushed, caught out and clearly embarrassed by it. He didn't want her to think he was looking at her like a woman, obviously to her mind because he didn't actually think of her in that way anymore. Ignoring his gestures with little more than an impatient eye roll, dismissing him as being the unfortunate possessor of a male brain, she focused on the information he was providing.
Following him out of the trailer and down the steps, not bothering to lock the door behind her as she let it slam shut, she regarded Dewey's pickup with some distaste. Gale had never exactly been a truck kind of person, but he was the one who may have some idea of where the Samantha woman was, and she didn't want him to possibly take off and leave her in the dust if she followed him in her rental. Stupid truck it would be, then.
"You didn't take the girl's number?" she asked, already exasperated at Dewey's lack of investigative skill. "Address, workplace? Seriously? Okay, well you said that she said that her sister was almost killed. Does that mean that her sister was attacked but is okay, or is she actually injured? Do you even know that much? Because if her sister is injured, then she's probably in the hospital, and Samantha could be there with her."
She had been following closely behind Dewey when he turned suddenly, causing her to have to try to take a step back to avoid colliding into him. She didn't quite manage this, and his shoulder, a little wider now than she was accustomed to, knocked against her as he turned. Gale staggered back, her heel catching on a small rock, and reached out to keep herself from tripping entirely, grabbing hold of Dewey's upper arm. For several moments she kept hold of him, almost breathless with the realization that she was touching him for the first time in nearly two years. It took deliberate effort for her to open her hand and let go of him, and she knew her neck had flushed.
It took her several more seconds for Dewey's words, uttered as he turned, to sink in. Then her mouth dropped, and her hand shot out without a second thought, grabbing hold of his arm again in a much stronger grasp as her eyes opened wide.
"Wait a minute. Wait a fucking minute. This Samantha is Billy Loomis's DAUGHTER?! Did you actually manage to forget that extremely relevant information for any amount of time?!"
Almost as an afterthought, she glanced over at her rental car. "This thing is going to be stolen or sitting on four slashed tires when we get back here, isn't it?"
It was back to the usual conversation with Gale, calling out his stupidity as it presented itself. "In all fairness," he started. "I hadn't wanted to help them when they were here. I changed my mind long after they were gone." He felt ashamed of himself for wanting nothing to do with Samantha and her sister initially, but he hoped his help in the near future would be enough to satiate his conscience.
"She only said 'attacked'," he answered. "But the news has the girl's face plastered all over the place, and the injuries don't sound minor. I think one of her legs is broken, and she got stabbed pretty badly," he added. "Best case scenario, the hospital she's at is crawling with officers-" he deduced before he felt Gale's weight hit him square in the chest.
The impact nearly knocked the wind out of him, but his breath was taken away when Gale grabbed his arm. It was an accident on her part, but Dewey thought it to be the happiest accident in the whole world. His heart pounded faster when her hand lingered, however it would come to regulate itself once she was absent. Their first non-threatening touch in two years and he wished it lasted just as long if not longer than that time.
His next comment was clearly a mistake, 'cause the once almost gentle hold Gale used was now vice-like. "Ow! Geez, that hurts!" he complained before she looked over at her rental and expressed worry over if his cracked out neighbor was going to slash the tires.
He tried pulling out of her grasp as softly and subtly as possible. "Maybe," he mumbled. "We can take it if you want," he suggested. He doesn't want her to be paranoid with the possible trashing of a car that doesn't belong to her and the uncomfortableness of a beat-up truck being her ride. Even more so, Dewey was reeling from a hangover, was doped on pain medication, and was already, to the slightest degree, tipsy.
Gale shrugged, unfazed by Dewey's confession that he initially hadn't wanted to help Samantha. "Strange woman with a shifty eyed man beside her knocking on the door at a trailer park asks you if you want to help her track down a murderer again? Honestly, it's pretty stupid of you to change your mind. How do you know this Samantha isn't the one who attacked her own sister? It wouldn't be the first time a girl posed as innocent victim."
At Dewey's complaint that she was hurting him in her hold of his arm, she glanced down, actually surprised to realize she was touching him. Again. When he made an effort to pull back, she quickly removed her hand without apology, taking an awkward step back as she attempted to pretend the two touches hadn't made her heart beat erratically, that her chest didn't feel hollow as soon as she withdrew her hand.
"How did you find out about her being Billy's daughter? Did she just offer that up? Do we know it's true? If she is the killer or one of them, it could be delusional wishing. We're checking that first thing," she declared. "Billy's father is still living. We can get a DNA sample from him or other living relatives if we have to, or if anything with Billy's DNA is still in evidence lockers somewhere. Get a sample from Samantha too, and if it's true, find out who knows besides her and Shifty Eyes."
Glancing again at the rental, she looked Dewey over critically before nodding. "Yeah, let's take the rental. And I'm driving. We have enough people trying to kill you without you crashing us into a tree driving drunk."
Fishing her keys out, she unlocked it and slid behind the wheel, glancing over at him as she waited for him to get in the passenger side.
"Tell me you haven't been driving like this."
"It's not like I haven't thought about it, Gale," he defended. Jill Roberts was scarily convincing in her role as the new Sidney Prescott, and she even let her mother be murdered to fit her remake. He had red-flags concerning Samantha's validity, especially concerning how Loomis even conceived before he got a bullet to the brain. "Sid and Tate always had their 'girly talks' about boys, and after Sid's mom was killed, she always talked about not wanting to take the next step; it wouldn't surprise me if the bastard was off galivanting with some other girl to get his fix," he hypothesized. "She never mentioned if her sister was Loomis' child, but I doubt he was able to get in two rounds in between the gap between of the girl's birth dates," he continued. "Plus, what does she gain from lying about her heritage?" He huffed in frustration as his old detective gears began spinning again. "Either way, she's still a suspect, but not a high one on my list," he concluded.
Dewey's brain had to process the lengths Gale wanted him to go through to get a DNA match. "What am I supposed to do? Waltz into the police department and ask for classified evidence that, need I remind you, comes from a serial killer?" he spewed. "And how am I supposed to ask Samantha for her DNA? Request for an innocent finger prick for blood samples? That doesn't sound weird at all."
Gale made her approach to the rental, and so he followed. He wasn't going to argue that she should be designated driver - if letting two strangers into his home when a new Ghostface is in town wasn't evidence enough that he wasn't entirely there, then he didn't know what else there could be to justify it. He opened the passenger door and squeezed himself into the space, a feat his back did not appreciate. His face blanked when Gale asked if he ever drove under the influence.
"Would it be a bad time to tell you that I was forced to resign because of it?" he sheepishly asked with an awkward grin and arms defensively crossed.
Gale nodded, already aware that Sidney had not lost her virginity until the night of Tatum's murder and Dewey's first serious injuries. It wasn't a conversation the other woman cared to have often, but it had come up a few times over the years. Given the resentment Billy had carried over this and the fact that he was a sociopathic murderer intent on directing everyone's life into a movie of his creation, it was hardly surprising to think of him having a girl on the side, one willing to put out for him.
"What do most murderers gain from lying? Fame, fear that they view as respect and awe, and people's trust. All a possible reason for Samantha to either lie or tell the truth to further her own cause, if she is involved with the murders. I say she's on the suspect list."
She rolled her eyes at Dewey again as he balked at her insistence of a confirmation of Sam's heritage. "There are always people you can talk or pay off into giving you classified information if you want it enough. Especially if you don't plan to publicly release it. And as for asking Sam, she volunteered the information, she should be fine with proving it. Weird is not a concern when it comes to tracking murderers, Dewey, who the hell cares about weird?"
As Gale started the car's engine, waiting for Dewey's response, she felt her heart sink even before he gave it. She tried to arrange her expression into a severe, judging look, but her features pinched, and more than anger, her eyes flashed fear for was it possible that Dewey had become so lost?
"Oh, Dewey," she sighed, shaking her head. "When did you stop letting yourself care?"
Too late she hears her own words and the implied but not intended meaning- that Dewey had not just stopped caring about himself, but her too. Angry at herself for this newest slip, she stomped on the reverse more forcefully than necessary, pulling out of the trailer park circle.
"Where are we going, the hospital?"
"Is that how you found me? Paid off a rookie to find my address?" he joked, although if she interpreted it as a genuine question then he won't tell her otherwise; he's still in the dark about how she even found him. Actually, he thought, scratch that, she probably threatened the poor man's life is she didn't get the information she wanted.
"And for your information, I'd find it weird if a fifty year old drunk man came up to me and asked for my blood," he added. "I don't know what stuff you got up to in New York without me, but it's not normal here." He hadn't realized what he said until he said it, and he immediately shrunk back into himself. What if she got hurt during their time apart? Could he have protected her? His palm rubbed at his leg for comfort and a far off look caught in his eyes.
He didn't expect Gale's response, and it seemed she didn't either, if the look of shock was anything to go by. Whatever way it was meant to sound, Dewey knew the implication. Truth be told, he never stopped caring about Gale, even if that sounded implausible - he only did what he thought was best for her. Of course, what he thought was moronic.
He didn't think he could ever bring himself to care for his own well-being again, not even if every therapist in the world was assigned to him. "Gale, I'm-" he started before cutting himself off out of sheer surprise of the vehicle's sudden reverse out of the lot; if there was any moment he needed the "oh-shit" handle, it was now. A fleeting thought told him that his drunk driving was probably better than Gale's normal driving.
"Uh...yeah, hospital. We can grab something to eat while we're there," he suggested, more out of thought for her and not for the fact that he hadn't eaten in a day or two. At the thought of food, his stomach practically punched itself and he started craving for a bottle to ease the pain. He only noticed his hand was twitching some time into the ride before he clutched it with his other hand.
Gale shrugs a shoulder dismissively at Dewey's question of how she had found him. "I didn't need to pay anyone. I know how to properly motivate people to give me needed information. If this Samantha had come to me first, we would have a lot more information on hand right now. But we'll fix that now."
In other words, threats. But she saw no reason to inform Dewey of this.
Her head swiveled to give a fast glance to him as he mentioned New York, and her features went tight, knuckles whitening as she tightened her hands around the steering wheel so much that her arms felt the pressure of her grasp up to her shoulders. Turning her face back towards the windshield, she could feel the hard mask of deliberate disconnect blank out her features and make them cold, even as her entire being flooded with pain. How could he talk so easily about her being alone in New York, about not knowing what she was doing there? After the apologies and even tears, did he still dismiss it that easily?