Torin and Summer

Chapter 9 (Summer): I Wasn't The Only One

Torin was parked under the portico right by the hospital entrance when I walked outside, and he was standing by the passenger side of the car with the door open for me. It was easy to see that he wanted to ask how my appointment went, but I'd deliberately told him I didn't want him coming inside the hospital with me, much less accompanying me to my appointment.

"You can drop me at the door, Torin," I'd said when we pulled into the hospital parking lot.

"Summer, I won't say a word but please let me walk in and go to the doctor's office with you. I'll sit out in the waiting room, but just let me walk with you --"

"No. Just drop me at the entrance and then wait for my text that I'm done. Think of it like the cell phone lot at the airport."

He'd done as I asked, but I knew it was under silent, disapproving protest.

Now I was just ignoring his quizzical glances because I just didn't feel like sharing information with the man who'd kept so much critical information from me for such a long time. In fact, I was feeling mean. Incredibly mean and venomous as his confessions had played nonstop in my overtaxed brain. 

Here are all the reasons I hurt you and treated you like shit for the last year or so.

So, just as he was about to take off, I asked Siri to look up internal gangrene following an appendectomy. Torin hit the brakes so hard I was thankful for my seatbelt as he threw the car in park and turned to me with wild eyes.

"What the fuck, Summer! What the fuck did the doctor say? Are you OK? Why the fuck are they letting you go home? Shouldn't you be back in the hospital? Are they going to put you on a different antibiotic? How bad is this? What are they doing for you? When is he going to see you again?"

Having relieved some of my spitefulness, and because I didn't like feeling so mean, I let him off the hook. 

"He said I was perfectly fine. I was just looking up things for informational purposes only. You want to know the symptoms before they appear. Information is our first line of defense."

He looked at me, and even after the past eighteen months, I still knew my husband and his various expressions. Knew there were a million things he wanted to say, but he restrained himself.

"I'm glad you're OK," he said finally.

But Torin didn't shift to drive and take off; instead, he just sat there for a minute, staring straight ahead through the windshield, hands clenching and unclenching on the steering wheel.

"Are you going to start driving?" I asked.

"I just need a minute," he said in a ragged voice.

It was closer to three minutes before he finally drove away. Torin was quiet all the way home, and so was I. Tired from the excursion to the doctor's office, I went into my bedroom and took a nap.

When I woke up, I heard voices in the living room, so, thinking it was Bridgette, I snuck quietly out of my room and into the hallway that led to the living room. But there wasn't a feminine voice to be heard. Just Torin and two other men's voices.

"You can't just quit," one man with a gravelly voice was saying.

"I already did, but I didn't think my resignation would merit an in-home visit from you."

"This is serious, Torin. You're our best hope at figuring out who she's working for and what she knows." This was the second man speaking and he had a very soft voice. 

Talk louder, please!

"Look, I haven't made any progress in a year so I'm not sure why you're convinced anything's going to change and I'm going to suddenly find some information that blows the case wide open."

"We're close. We feel it," Gravel said.

"Based on what? A psychic reading? Are you withholding information from me or something that would make you say something like that?"

"No," Soft said. "Mmmfm mmmf mfmmmf."

Dammit! What the hell did he just say? Speak the fuck up, asshole!

"You have got to be kidding me," Torin objected. "You can't honestly believe that. I've found nothing for you."

Kidding about what? I'm dying here!

"You owe us," Gravel said.

"Now I know you're fucking with me. I don't owe you jack shit. I agreed to six months. You assured me it'd be over, case closed by then. Now a year later, we're still no closer than when we started, so I'm done. I quit. I've fucked up my marriage and --"

"Well, frmmsn, mmf mmmfhhmm," Soft mumbled again. 

Seriously, dude?

"Listen, I quite possibly messed up in a permanent way with my wife that I can't come back from, so my main objective now is to see if I can make it right with her no matter what I have to do. That's going to take all of my focus and energy, and I don't have time for anything else, and not only that, I'm not making time for anything else. That's not on me if my plans don't mesh with your plans, but I'm not giving you anything more than I've already given you. I've done too much to the detriment of my wife and marriage and I'm done. Out."

"Look at it this way: if she's done with you, then she's done with you, so let her go and then there's really nothing standing in the way of you working the job." 

And a big fuck you to you, Mr. Gravel. 

"In fact, with your wife out of the picture now, you could get really close to Bridgette. That could --"

Whoa, whoa, whoa! Did Gravel just suggest that Torin start sleeping with Bridgette?

"You can get the fuck out and leave," Torin said angrily, and I heard shuffling as if he and the two other men were standing up. "And by leave I mean don't stop by or call again. I'm done. I'm not coming back and you can figure out some other way to figure out what the hell she's up to without me."

"You're really OK with letting your country down?" Gravel asked. 

Oh, please.

"If it means I have a chance of winning back my wife, then yes. Absolutely. Your attempts at a guilt trip aren't working."

"Think of Elijah," Soft threw the Hail Mary pass at Torin.

"You'll have to think of him," Torin said, and I could hear the guilt in his voice, but he made no attempt to pick up what Soft had thrown at him. "I promised to help Terry, and I tried, but I can't help Elijah anymore if it means hurting my wife more than I already have. I just can't do that."

"Well, I hope you sleep well at night knowing you've let your country down," Gravel tossed that nastiness right in Torin's face. "You served honorably for years, only to let us down when you were most needed."

"I'll happily live with that if I can get my wife back," he said, steel in his tone. "Now I'm telling you to leave."

I heard the front door open and close, and I hurried back to my room and quietly shut the door in case Torin came looking for me to get my dinner order.

We were to find out very soon that I wasn't the only one who'd overheard that conversation.