Tara and Noah
"I guess everybody here's spent a lot of time trying to figure out those questions," he said sympathetically. He'd done a lot of that himself. Why him? If he hadn't gone to take the trash out from his shop right then, would he have been spared, or would his abductors waited for another time? They made it sound as if everyone had been carefully selected for this. Why had he had to give up his everyday life for this, and why had everyone else here? None of it made any cogent sense to him, and there was nothing he could do about it. He thought that maybe her urge to question would only intensify when the shock wore off.
He waited, watching her reaction to the knowledge that he'd been taken out and then put back and felt inwardly thankful that she didn't ask. This didn't seem like the time or place to get into a discussion of that. Surprisingly few people had asked him about it up close and personal. Kiley had. Pam had on the network, but he hadn't felt like that was the place to explain it either.
Noah glanced around when she asked how bad it got and then turned his gaze back to her, unsure how to answer. "I think I've missed a lot," he said, his voice equally soft. "You know, from missing nearly two months here." He made a rueful face. "Most of the time it seems to be fine. They brought in a guy who attacked a few people for no good reason, but he's in a cell now so he has to behave himself." He wasn't sure if anyone had warned her about Simms yet, and in a way he hated to bring it up at a party, but it felt necessary.