Free Return (Coming Home #1) by Meli Raine Page A

from noon to three. The one hour I got to visit Dad was the highlight of his life. We couldn’t hug. I couldn’t feel his strong, protective arms around me. The deep rumble of laughter in his chest was long gone. A tight hug, an embrace of holding on to me and telling me it would all be okay never happenedin those three years.
    And it would never happen again.
    At least living thirteen hundred miles away from my hometown, I didn’t have to deal with judgment on top of it all. And now he’s dead.
    But the shame lives on here in Yates.
    “ Of course I know it,” Amy says, setting aside the pizza box. There’s enough left over for me to take a slice to work for lunch.  
    I can’t eat any more right now.My throat is too full of my unresolved past.
    “Townies always know,” she says, digging in my tiny fridge to grab her pint of ice cream. Without looking at me, she peels off the top and scoops an enormous piece of what looks like cookies and cream into her mouth. She turns and freezes, her mouth open. The ice cream is a blob in her mouth.
    “ Carrie , you look like you’re about to pass out,” she saysaround the cold blob.
    “ What have I done?” I whisper, finally safe enough to break down. “Coming back was a horrible idea. The Claw. Mark. The dean. My dad. All of it.” My voice drops and so does my body as I move fast to the bed, laying on my back and staring at the fiberglass ceiling.  
    “I shouldn’t have come back. But after Dad died, what was I supposed to do?” My throat is full of salty tearsand regret. I t’s the taste of bitterness at having no choices. “I wasn’t getting anywhere in Oklahoma . Elaine kept telling me I always had a place here. The alumni association called and asked if I wanted to apply for the job. Free tuition and a full-time salary with benefits sounded like it was the right move.” My voice cracks. I’m rambling.
    I don’t care.
    Amy finishes her mouthful. T hose eyesare warm and nonjudgmental. Caring and just listening. I remember why I came home again. Is having one friend, one tried-and-true BFF enough, though?
    Enough to put myself through a ll this?
    “You didn’t just come home because of that, Carrie,” she whispers. She says it so quietly it’s like a threat. A threat to say what she really means.
    I’m all fed up with feeling threatened. Been there, donethat. “You think my plan is crazy.”
    “Getting a job at the college and snooping around to find the real person who was doing all that drug smuggling? To try to clear your dad’s name? No. It’s fine. That’s a smart plan. Why not jump out of a plane without a parachute or travel back in time to be Jack the Ripper’s mistress?” Her voice has this strange blend of compassion and sarcasm that only Amycan manage.
    “It’s not dangerous,” I protest. Weakly.
    “The hell it’s not! Carrie, the cops investigated. They found evidence.” She held up a palm as I started to argue. “Mark was part of the team. Don’t you think that if there’d been any kind of clue that could have freed your dad, he’d have found it?”
    And now we a re back to Mark.
    Everything le a d s back to Mark.
    “Maybe Mark missed something.My dad kept trying to tell me—”
    “ I don’t think you’ve had time to grieve properly, Carrie,” Amy says softly. The fast change in topic cuts me off mid-sentence.  
    “What does that mean?” I ask. My tone is more vicious than I want it to be. I can’t help it. She doesn’t take it personally. “People say that, but how do you ‘properly’ grieve? Why are there rules about how you’re supposed to act whenyour only parent dies?”
    An unspoken extra hovers in the air, because what I’m not saying is harder to deal with.
    “And the way he died,” she says, putting the unspoken to words. What I thought would hurt to hear actually doesn’t. I’d forgotten that Amy was real. Honest and human and real .
    More tears fall down my cheeks. I let them. It feels good to