Callie
The campsite is only reachable by kayak.
They leave at dawn, Adrian’s Subaru packed with wetsuits and wicking layers, kayaking booties, wool hats, whistles, food, headlamps, dry bags stuffed with extra clothes.
She finds she likes the ritual of it all, the preparation.
It feels good, applying her mind to a practical task with a clear goal, versus the mess of Jane and the drugs, of Annabelle and her confession.
It strikes her, as they pack, that she’s never really had a hobby as an adult.
As a child there had been piano, but she gave it up when Jenna stopped showing up at her recitals, and by then keeping the house up and making sure Jenna didn’t pass out with the stove on more or less edged out any hobbies anyway.
And then college, work, all about getting ahead, about being the best and the sharpest, edging free time, pleasure, out of her life.
She had been so focused on survival, on keeping everything together from such a young age, she never learned: Life didn’t have to be a grim, gray slog.
It didn’t all have to be so hard all the time.
She looks over as he drives. He got up before she did to make them breakfast sandwiches and wrap them in tin foil, eggs on English muffins with melted cheese and a generous spread of pesto.
A thermos full of French press coffee. She teases him about this, how particular he can be, but really she loves the way he cooks with care, with joy.
Or maybe what she loves is him, she realizes. And even though it scares the shit out of her, she can’t help but smile. He is the one solid thing in her life.
“What? What’s that look for?” But he slides a hand over her thigh, squeezes, like he knows. Like he’s thinking the same thing.
Just say it, Hauser, she tells herself. Tell him.
She’s distracted by a buzz from her pocket. Jane. Callie, we need to talk. Please, please call me back.
Jane had called her twice before 6:00 A.M. Callie let it go to voicemail both times, even as she felt that tick of worry, same as the night she heard Fauver knock on her door. Something is wrong. But she can’t talk to Jane. Not until she sorts out what she’s going to do.
She turns her phone off and shuts it in Adrian’s glove compartment as they pull up to the boat launch. He looks at her with approval. “Look at you, committing to a weekend in nature.”
“I need the break.” She hasn’t told him the details about Jane, or anything about Baby Doe—only that she’s been looking into a cold case, that it’s been getting under her skin.
He asked her how the drug case was going and she only shook her head.
“And who says anything about committing to nature. I’m committing to being shacked up with a hot guy all weekend. Nature be damned.”
He smiles, leans over, and plants a kiss on her neck, precise and firm and that she feels between her legs.
“You’re really gonna make me kayak for two hours to get more of that?”
“Yup.”
“Ah, fuck you.”
“Eventually.”
She reaches a hand underneath his jacket, under his shirt, to the bare skin and taut muscles of his stomach, desire crackling through her.
They get the boats in the water, and as they push off a shiver runs through Callie, despite all the gear.
The cold radiates off the river, presses against the place where her neck meets her hair.
Adrian told her the rule for winter paddling was dress to swim.
The surface is flat and easy, but still, she can’t help but taste the cold in her mouth, imagine the plunge.
She warms up as they get moving, and the work of paddling feels good, the freedom of pulling out and navigating the bend, the car disappearing behind them.
She looks around at the winter-stilled forest and thinks that there is a part of her that likes this place.
But since the fight with Jane she’s also been thinking about what it would be like to leave.
She only rents her cabin on a monthly basis.
She could try to get her old job back. Get a new apartment, finally get all of her boxes out of storage.
Jane is getting better, maybe as good as she’ll ever be.
And she would forget about the Baby Doe case.
Forget her own connection to it, allow the question of her paternity to go dormant again, the way it was for so long.
Let Annabelle live her life. Tell her she’s sorry, but she doesn’t know what happened to Sabrina, that they don’t have enough to go on.
A broken bracelet, an old lighter, a hunch.
Especially not without the resources she’s used to.
Sometimes it is impossible to find the end of a story like that.
Some cases just go that way, even though it hurts to admit as much.
She won’t look for her father, this faceless man who cast such a shadow over so many lives.
For once in her life, she doesn’t want the answers.
Doesn’t want to know what she might have inherited from him, if they share any mannerisms, if she would look into his eyes and see her own staring back at her.
Maybe it was never Jenna’s unruly nature she was reacting to, with her obsession with order, but something uglier and more primal, a cruel strain encoded in her DNA, something about herself she can never run away from or change.
Adrian is the only loose end. It feels dangerous to shape her life around him.
And she couldn’t possibly live here in the Pines if she and Jane were—what?
—not friends anymore. And if she stays here, will she be compelled to study every man of a certain age at the supermarket, wondering if perhaps his hands are the same shape as her own?
If there isn’t something familiar about the turn of his jaw?
She’d never stop torturing herself. Adrian could come see her in North Jersey.
But even as she thinks it, she knows he wouldn’t.
His life is here. The house on the river.
His boats. Maybe he would make the trek up to see her a few times, but it would get old, the tug between two places.
It wouldn’t work. Though the thought of ending things feels unbearable. She’s already lost too much.
As though he can feel her thinking about him, he turns and smiles at her, the laugh lines around his eyes fanning out in that way that makes him look mischievous. She paddles faster to catch up, to move her body so that she might make her thoughts go still.
The tent is humid with the heat they’ve created—since dinner they’ve already fucked twice.
He laughed after she reached for him the second time—“I’ve barely had time to catch my breath”—but she’s eager for oblivion, the way only sex can smother her ticking brain, all her thoughts pressed flat to the back of her skull.
After, she lies against him. He traces a finger around her ear.
“So, Callie Hauser, is it time we had a conversation?”
“We’ve had lots of conversations.”
“I think you know the one I mean. The conversation about what we’re doing here.”
“We’re having lots of sex in the woods.” It isn’t what she wanted to say.
She wants to tell him about the feeling she had in the car on the way here.
That this is the real thing. Tell him what she loves about him and have the courage to be honest and just hope he feels the same way.
The snark is a habit, ugly and cowardly, the way she is with the guys at the station. Always has her hackles up.
He takes a breath. She’s gone a step too far and she knows it.
“Okay. I’ll go first. I really like you.
But I can’t gauge whether this is a serious thing for you or a diversion.
If I had it my way, you’d be my girlfriend.
You’d keep a toothbrush in my bathroom. I’d make some space in my dresser for you to keep some things to wear so you didn’t have to leave early all the time.
You’d meet my friends. My sister. And we’d see how that feels.
You know what? No. I know how that would feel.
It would be awesome. But I get the feeling that you’re not ready for that. ”
“Is this why you brought me out here? So I couldn’t avoid your questions?” Stop, Callie, she thinks. Just talk to him. But her mouth is a step ahead of her mind. She’s not going to drag this good man into her messy life, into the dark morass of her heritage. He deserves better than that.
“I’d say you’re doing a pretty good job avoiding them now. Which I suppose is its own kind of answer.” He shifts onto his side, and a little bit away from her.
She moves closer to him, closes the space.
Takes a deep breath. “I want this. I do. But things are complicated. I don’t know if I’ll be able to stay at my job.
Jane and I had a fight. And I don’t know how to stay here without one of those two things.
Jane, or a job. Because right now it’s not looking like I’ll have either.
I … like … you too.” Coward, she chastises herself.
The word like so small. “I’m happy being with you.
But I can’t pin my whole life on one person. ”
“I’m here. I’m all in on this. I’ll tell you as many times as you need to hear it.”
“I know … but that’s scary for me. Too scary.”
His hand had been on her stomach. He takes it back and she can only feel the cool air rush over where his warmth had been. “So you’re leaving, is what you are saying.”
“No. I’m thinking about leaving. It’s different.”
“When were you going to tell me?”
“I’ve had a lot on my mind. I just wanted to enjoy this trip, to be with you.”
“A last hurrah.”
“No! It’s not like that.”
“Sure feels like it to me.” He sighs, sits up. How did you screw all that up so fast? she thinks. He cocks his head like he’s going to say something else. Please, she wills him. I can’t speak anymore. I only make everything worse.
“I’ve gotta get some air,” he says.