Unseen (Will Trent / Atlanta Series)

let the words settle. “I want to go by the house. I want to see where it happened.”
    “That’s probably not a good idea,” Sara countered. “The police don’t clean up before they leave. It’ll look just how it did last night.”
    Nell seemed shocked by the information. She recovered quickly, taking a small notebook and a pen out of her purse. “I’ll tell Possum to go by the dollar store. There’s one right off the exit.” She clicked the pen and started writing. “We’ll need a bunch of rags. Lysol spray. Trash bags. Some gloves. What else—bleach?”
    Sara tried to reason with her. “There are services that take care of this kind of thing.”
    “I’m not gonna let some stranger clean my baby’s house.” Shesounded appalled. “That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard.”
    Sara knew better than to argue.
    “Why would anyone do this?” Nell asked. “He’s always been the sweetest boy. Never said a hard word against anybody. Always helping people. Never asking for anything in return. Why, Sara? Why would someone hurt him?”
    Sara shook her head, though Lena’s name was on the tip of her tongue.
    “His eyes are taped shut. He’s got all kinds of tubes coming out of him. They got this plastic thing looks like a Connect Four sticking out of his side.”
    “That’s probably a Pleur-evac,” Sara guessed. “It helps keep his lung open to give it time to heal.”
    “Well, you’ve just told me more than anybody else has, thank you very much.”
    Sara doubted this was true. She’d seen the glazed look in Nell’s eyes before. In traumatic situations, it was hard to understand the information being conveyed by doctors, let alone ask salient questions.
    Sara told Nell the same thing she told the families of her patients. “Write down all your questions as they come. If I can’t answer them, then we’ll find someone who will. All right?”
    “That’s good. I should’ve thought to do that. I’ve just been so …” She couldn’t finish the thought. “I mean, seeing him all—” Her words were cut off by a guttural sound. She lowered the notebook and pen to her lap, the shopping list forgotten. Tears rolled down her cheeks. Sara wondered if she was wishing her husband would return. More likely, she was praying her son would walk through the door.
    Sara took Nell’s hand again, but she couldn’t look at her. The pain was too raw. While Sara witnessed the possibility of death almost every single day, knowing Nell, knowing Jared, made it different. She had lost her outsider’s perspective.
    “Well, this is useless.” Nell’s voice was filled with self-recrimination. “Crying never helped anybody.” She pulled a pack of Kleenex from her purse and dried her eyes. “I haven’t told Delia.” Jared’s sister, Nell’s youngest child. “She’s working in the Gulf. She’s a vet now. Did you know that?” Sara nodded. “They got her scraping oil off sea turtles. She says the whole damn coast is still a tar pit.”
    “You need to tell her.”
    “What do I say? ‘That bitch your brother married mighta got him killed’?” Nell shook her head, visibly angry. “I knew when I found out he was seeing her that nothing good would come of it.”
    Sara said nothing.
    “He kept it from me for a full year. He knew I wouldn’t approve. He knew why, too.” Nell blew her nose in the Kleenex. “You warned me, Sara. You warned him, too. There’s no harm in a big fat ‘I told you so’ right about now.”
    Sara didn’t respond. She got no joy from being right.
    “Jared just wouldn’t listen. Kept saying Jeffrey knew the risk when he put on the badge. Like she had nothing to do with it. Like she didn’t abandon him when the going got tough.” Nell’s mouth twisted with disgust. “Part of me wonders if I’d just shut up about her, maybe he woulda gone on to somebody new.”
    The arguments were so familiar that Sara could practically recite them along with Nell. She’d tortured herself with the same recriminations after Jeffrey had died. Sara should’ve stopped him from working with Lena. She should’ve put her foot down. She should’ve told him that it was too dangerous, too risky, to get involved in Lena’s life.
    But his focus had always been on saving other people, never on saving himself.
    Sara told Nell, “You can’t second-guess yourself.”
    “Can’t I?” She indicated the waiting room. “I got all the time in the world to think about everything