Cody's Come Home. Mary Sullivan

I’m afraid so.”

      “I don’t want it to be over, Cody.”

      “I know, but we’ve gone around this a hundred times. Please, get in the car.”

      When he noticed how unhappy she looked, he softened his tone. He was taking his fatigue out on her. “Let’s get a good night’s sleep and talk in the morning. Okay?”

      She nodded and slipped into the car.

      He walked toward Aiyana to find out how she was doing, but drew up short. Salem and Emily hovered like mother hens, showering her with care and tenderness, exactly as she deserved. Exactly where she belonged. He was an interloper.

      They said when one door closed, another opened, but here Cody was, back in his hometown, and all of the doors were old and already known. There were no doors that hadn’t always been open to him. For a few precious moments in the wilderness with Aiyana, he’d wondered whether there might be a new door opening, but no. She had her life ahead of her. And he had a lot of repair work in front of him to make his life worth anything at all.

      As for his doors back in LA? They were closed for good. But his mind hadn’t yet left that world behind, and wouldn’t for a while. This feeling of straddling two worlds might be the death of him. He needed to sort out Stacey once and for all.

      He asked, “How did you get to the park?”

      “I rented a car at the airport and made my way to your parents’ house. Your uncle was there dropping off stuff in case the search went into a second day. He offered to drive me here.”

      Thanks, Noah, Cody thought with an uncharacteristic bitterness toward his uncle.

      He was being unfair. It wasn’t Noah’s fault; his uncle had merely exercised his basic decency.

      Cody drove her into town, stopping to retrieve her suitcases from her rental car on the way, and parked in front of the big old Victorian originally owned by the town’s founding father well over a hundred years ago.

      Physically taking her right into the B and B and making sure she rented a room was the only way to guarantee she wouldn’t end up back at his house.

      Cody carried her luggage in for her and waited while she registered. In her room, he set it all onto the floor and turned to her.

      “I’ll bring your rental car and see you off in the morning.”

      “Can’t we at least have dinner?”

      “Stacey, I need a clean break. I’m sorry.” He knew he sounded frustrated. To soften the blow of his honesty—they’d been around this too many times—he kissed her forehead. “I can’t do this anymore and you shouldn’t want to, either. It isn’t healthy.”

      He opened the door to leave.

      “We’ll talk tomorrow. I promise.”

      Back in his parents’ house, he showered, closed the blinds in the bedroom he’d grown up in and crawled into bed, pulling the covers over his head.

      With a little luck, when he woke up, the past dozen years would have all been a bad dream.