Page 27 of Hunted in Hope Town

He didn’t look up, but he paused in his eating. She couldn’t see his eyes, but the cast of his mouth was…pained.

It was clear just about everything she did caused him pain, and it twisted her insides into a million knots. But so did everything. Until she could find some understanding in the midst of all this not knowing, everything was going to hurt. She didn’t relish hurting him—whether that was because some part of her, deep underneath all the trauma, knew him, or simply because she was the kind of person who didn’t like to cause pain—she didn’t really know.

She supposed she hoped it was a little of both, and that there was some…solution to be found before this was all over.

He cleared his throat, set his fork down like he couldn’t stomach eating and rehashing Christmas.

“You were very into Christmas. You liked to decorate. Make cookies all month.” There was a fondness mixed in with the pain. She didn’t need to remember or know him to recognize that. “You Christmas shopped all year long. You were always on the lookout for the best presents.”

“What about you?”

He paused for a second, like he was considering his answer. “It was pretty common that I had to work Christmas day. That was why you’d tend to make it a month-long event.”

“No, I mean, did you like Christmas?”

“Kirsten, I’m just not sure—”

But she didn’t want to hear any more about how he wasn’t supposed to talk about this, how Dr. Leigh thought it would be bad for her. Particularly when he and Zach suspected Dr. Leigh.

“Ellis, the more honest you are, the more you tell me, maybe it unlocks something. To me that makes more sense than this idea that never upsetting me is going to allow me to heal. Not knowing is upsetting too. And this subject is pretty innocuous. Did you like Christmas or not?”

He sighed. “I had some painful memories tied to Christmas.”

“Like?”

He picked his fork back up, took a bite of green beans. He did not meet her gaze. “Both my parents died in December, so it was never a happy time for me. You tried to change that.”

She frowned a little. “That sounds insensitive.”

He shook his head, a slight smile curving his mouth. “No. You were never insensitive. You hadn’t had the greatest childhood Christmases either. You just really tried to make something that was ours, aside from the pain.”

Something about that warmed her. The idea of trying to make something good, for them. But it also brought home the fact she didn’t know anything about her family aside from him. “What about my parents? Do they know…?” She couldn’t put words to it. Surely she had some broader life outside of Ellis Sutton.

He must have read her anxiety, because he didn’t hedge his answers here. “You never knew your father. Your mother was not a stable figure in your life and often made choices that… She never prioritized you or your half sister’s safety, so the relationship was…rocky at best.”

“I have a sister?”

“You haven’t spoken in a few years. Same with your mother. Neither one of them could quite be happy for you finding some stability in your life, which they considered marriage and me. It caused friction, and when you started to set boundaries, they became unreachable.”

It brought no thoughts, no memories, no emotions. “Do they think I’m dead?”

“Honestly? I’m not sure. Because they’d gone no contact, I couldn’t get in touch with them before we had to leave Chicago. It’s possible they don’t know anything. It’s possible they saw a news story and think you’re dead. It’s hard to say, but…” He trailed off, tightened up. Focused on eating and never finished that sentence.

“But what?” she demanded, because there was something more there and she deserved to know it.

He sighed, met her gaze. “I think if they believed you were dead, they would have come out of the woodwork. There was a bit of a media cycle around what happened to us. They could have made some money off of playing the grieving family.” He must have noted the horror on her face. “Sorry if that sounds callous.”

She blinked, tried to work around the confusing emotions inside of her. But…she’d asked him for information, and he’d given it. She couldn’t be mad about whatever truths existed out there. “Is it callous if it’s the truth?”

“It took you a long time to learn, to accept you couldn’t save them from themselves. You went through a lot of hurt at their hands. The last few years, you’d tried to harden yourself to it, but it was hard on you. No matter what you try, you’ve got a soft heart.”

She could tell he was trying to be somewhat…detached. Like an impartial observer. But emotion leaked into his voice at the end there, like he couldn’t quite help it.

He looked down, away from her gaze, and exchanged fork for spoon and began to eat his soup. “You should eat,” he said between swallows. “Keep your strength up.”

She might have looked away, picked up her own spoon, but something was…taking shape in her mind. Like a memory. What she might have not so long ago waved off as a dream. A strange, confusing dream.

But now she knew that these might be real. These flashes of a life she didn’t understand or recognize. Just like him with a bullet wound, or him in that tuxedo.