Hallow Springs

Nine

We drove down Main toward Vesta street. It lined the back of the elementary school's playground and so Jeremy's morning commute was just a short cut across the soccer field each morning. It seemed like as soon as we got in the car, Peters took the chance to pry as any good cop would.

"So tell me about you and Jeremy. I never understood it."

"What do you mean?" I was lost in the distance over the steering wheel.

"I mean come on Amanda, you guys had a thing didn't you? You were always together." He only repeated a question I had heard so many times in so many ways. "You mean to tell me that a guy and a girl who were attached to the hip through their childhood, puberty and teen years just to remain friends?"

"We were just friends... he was like a brother to me." I couldn't help it but my voice trailed.

"Then why when you came back from college did you never hang out with him. Was it cause you were married and Sam didn't want you hanging out with your ex-boyfriend?"

"He wasn't my boyfriend!" I snapped at him. He leaned back in the passenger seat on the defensive.

"Woah, woah, woah. Okay! Okay! But there was something going on, and I think since Jeremy is missing now, I'd like to know what." My grip tightened on the steering wheel but he had a point. I yanked the car down seventh street and headed up past the high school and elementary schools.

"Jeremy and I grew up as next door neighbors. We were friends. That's all!" I found myself getting defensive. Maybe it was because I was trying to remain impersonal and professional or maybe Peters was still being the little shit he always was. Regardless, as I cut down Vesta, I was focused on one thing – the house five doors up on the right.

"Don't you think your relationship is relevant to this case?"

"No, I don't!" One of the things about living in a small town, people are as gossipy and nosey as they were back in high school. They don't have much to keep their mind on, so it begins to wander onto each other. But Peters and I had plenty to stay focused on. We were pulling up to a crime scene – a fresh case before us, ready for dissection like a frog in biology class. Peters was my lab partner and this time I was scared to cut into it.

There was a small gathering of people, each of which had decided to walk their dogs so they could run into the crime scene down the street. There was no media, yet, but when three cop cruisers are parked outside and caution tape marks the door, news travels fast. The town's walking gossip magazine, Jeannine Whiteside, was no doubt there with her feigned concern. She was in it for the dirt and could be as dangerous as a journalist trying to make a name for themselves. I tried to not make eye contact with her as I hopped up the front stoop steps, but I'm sure she had recognized me and there would be a get together down at the Main Street Café, where her exclusive scoop of my return would begin to whisper its way through town. The story would start at the café, then hit the YMCA by Pilates, then it'd make its rounds to bridge club and the carpool line and by book club that night there would be ten different wine infused versions that would collide, forming some inaccurate and damning psycho analysis of me and what I've been doing since I left town.

Welcome back to Small Town USA.

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