2. Callum
2
CALLUM
“Callum Knight.” Chief Dawson’s voice boomed as he stood in the doorway of his office at the back of the police station. His thumbs were tucked in his suspenders, and his beer belly hung over his signature silver belt buckle with dual gold pistols in the center. His heavy booted footsteps thudded on the hardwood floor as he approached the front desk. Standing six foot six, over three hundred pounds with a thick salt-n-pepper goatee and a weathered scar that slashed diagonally across his right cheek, Chief Dawson was intimidating in both size and appearance. “If it isn’t the prodigal son. Boy, you are the spittin’ image of your daddy.”
I’d been back in my hometown for approximately twenty-six hours after not stepping foot in the city limits for a decade, and I’d heard that same sentiment a dozen times so far.
As the mayor of Firefly Island, my father had worked closely with the police chief. The two of them were thick as thieves and, I learned, about as honest, at least when it came to wedding vows. The chief’s extramarital affairs were an open secret here in Firefly and, although numerous, had all amounted to little more than flings.
My father’s indiscretion, however, was the opposite. His infidelity was the best-kept secret this town had ever had. It was discovered only after he died, and was with only one woman, Danielle Marsh, who was my dad’s secretary and was also fifteen years younger than him. My old man’s affair was as cliché as it could get, with one exception: it resulted in a baby. Ironically, my mother had thrown the baby shower for Danielle. That baby was thirteen now, and she was the reason I was in the police station today.
“Callum’s here to report Chloe Marsh missing.” Brenda Baker handed the chief the report I’d filled out.
Officer Baker held two distinctions, one as the first female police officer in Firefly Island and the other as the longest-serving, which she reminded me of when I arrived at the station. She’d just received a Rolex watch to commemorate her forty-fifth year on the force.
“Is that right?” Chief Dawson put on his reading glasses, which hung around his neck, and skimmed the paperwork before lifting his head to peer down at me over the spectacles. “When’s the last time you saw the young lady?”
“I went to her room to check on her last night around ten p.m., and she was gone,” I relayed the information I told both Brenda and a very young Deputy Clarke, who had gone out on a call halfway through the report I’d started filing with him.
I wasn’t familiar with Clarke. If the peach fuzz he was rocking on his chin was any indication, he couldn’t have hit puberty that long ago, and he had to be new in town. And by new, I meant he had to have moved to Firefly sometime after I’d left ten years ago because I didn’t know him. Brenda explained they were a bit short-staffed today due to the annual New Year’s Day parade that was happening in the Downtown Historic District, so Clarke was the only officer at the station besides the “Big Boss” to answer the disturbance call from the Piggly Wiggly.
“Callum has custody of Miss Chloe now that her mama passed,” Brenda explained.
Temporary custody for now, but that was splitting hairs.
“I heard about that. Poor Danielle.” Chief Dawson shook his head before shrugging. “I’m sure she’s just runnin’ around with her friends. You know how youngins are. Have you called ’round?”
“No. I don’t know who her friends are. I just got to town yesterday.”
Forty-eight hours ago, I got a call from an attorney that Danielle Marsh, the mother of my father’s illegitimate child, had died and I had been named as my half-sister’s guardian. I didn’t know my sister at all. I’d met her once at my father’s funeral when she was three. Despite that, I packed up my truck and drove across the country with my six-year-old son from Arizona to Georgia to figure the situation out.
When I arrived in my hometown yesterday morning for the first time since my father passed away ten years ago, I picked up my sister at the friend’s house she’d been staying with since her mom passed and brought her to the Christmas tree farm I grew up on. My paternal grandfather Buzz, who was in his late eighties, still ran the business that had been in his family for three generations and lived there with my mom, who remained there after my father’s death. She was on a cruise with friends, but I was able to speak to her when they reached a port, and she insisted that I stay on the farm with Chloe and my son Matty.
It felt strange to bring my father’s illegitimate child to my mom’s home, but she had always been forgiving when it came to my father. Even after his will revealed not only his infidelity but also a child that his affair had produced, she never had one bad word to say about him. I always assumed it was because my dad was really the only family my mom had—well, him and Buzz, my grandfather.
She never talked about her family. The only things I knew were that she was an only child and that she’d run away from home when she was fifteen. I’d asked about her childhood countless times, but she always changed the subject. My mom lived by the motto, if you don’t have something nice to say, don’t say anything at all, so that response led me to believe there was nothing nice to say about her parents.
“When you gonna get back in the ring?” Chief Dawson asked.
It wasn’t a ring; it was a cage. I was an MMA fighter, not a boxer, but again, there was no point in correcting him.
“I’m retired.” I was semi-retired, but tomayto, tomahto.
“Why’s that? Martinez must’a really rung yer bell to have ya hang up yer gloves.”
I stopped fighting after it became evident that I was going to need to take on the majority of the responsibility financially, physically, and emotionally for Matty. There was no way I could devote the time necessary to training at my previous level and be, for all intents and purposes, a single father.
“Do you need more information from me to find Chloe?” I asked, refocusing the conversation back to my missing sister.
“Did she say anything about where she might be?” Chief Dawson asked.
I sighed. I’d put all this in my report.
“Last night after dinner Chloe asked if she could go out with friends for New Year’s. I didn’t think it would be a good idea, so I said no.”
It had been my knee-jerk response. Thirteen was too young to go out on New Year’s Eve, and she just lost her mom. I didn’t want her to do anything stupid, but it seemed like that’s exactly what I’d pushed her into doing.
“Did ya now?”
I nodded. “She went upstairs to her room.” She slammed her door so hard it shook the entire house, but I left that part out. “When I went up a of couple hours later to check on her, she was gone. I went out looking for her. I went down to the beach and the cave. I went to the pier. I drove around the dunes, went up to the lookout, and the drive-in.” I went to all the old spots that teenagers used to go when I grew up here. I found a lot of teenagers, but no sign of Chloe. My half-sister was only thirteen, but I even checked the only bar in town just in case she managed to sneak in. “I stopped by Southern Comfort just in case she snuck in; no one had seen her.”
Sheriff Dawson didn’t look particularly alarmed. In fact, he didn’t even look slightly alarmed. He exhaled as he handed the papers back to Brenda. “I’ll make some calls round to folks and send out a BOLO.”
I wasn’t sure that I’d accomplished anything by coming in and reporting her missing, but at least I’d tried to do the right thing. I’d had temporary custody of my sister for exactly twenty-four hours, and she was missing. What the hell had her mom been thinking when she chose me to be her guardian?
“Thanks.” For nothing . I turned to leave feeling more helpless than I had before I walked through the doors.
“J.T.’s gonna be stoked you’re back,” Chief Dawson called out.
That made one of us , I thought, lifting my hand and grinning as I pushed open the station door and made my way down the steps onto the grassy expanse of the town square.
J.T. was Sheriff Dawson’s son Jack, who everyone called Dawson. He and I were close growing up. We bonded over the shared experience of having high-profile fathers in positions of power and visibility in the small-town community. We understood the scrutiny of living our lives under a microscope and navigating teen years with so many eyes on us. He was one of the handful of guys I’d kept in relative contact with over the years I’d been gone.
My phone vibrated in my pocket, and I pulled it out, hoping it was a call from Chloe. When I saw it was a message from my son’s mother Felicity, my hope morphed to frustration. She was an influencer with over five million followers on her social media platforms. Nearly ten months ago she left on a brand trip that was supposed to last two weeks but had now lasted nearly ten months.
We got engaged a month after my son was born, and she claimed since I put a ring on her finger, she’d lost her identity. Apparently, the search to discover who she was meant traveling abroad and not coming home for nine and a half months.
If it were just me, it wouldn’t bother me at all. Of course, if it were just me, we wouldn’t be engaged. But Matty asked questions. He didn’t understand why she was gone so long. She hadn’t been there for milestones she’d never get back—birthday, Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas with him.
Felicity was five years younger than me, which I took into consideration when judging her behavior. She had Matty when she was twenty-two, and she was twenty-eight now. I was trying to be understanding. Maybe she simply didn’t want to miss her twenties by being tied down. But I had a feeling it was more than that. I had a feeling she just didn’t want to be a mom or a wife. I’d suggested that was the case, but she vehemently denied it.
The problem was, Felicity knew I didn’t want Matty to grow up in a broken home. She knew how much it meant to me to have his mom and dad together, and that I would do anything I could to make that happen. She’d always done whatever she wanted whenever she wanted, and there hadn’t been any consequences. She went out and partied, and I didn’t care. She left to go on brand trips for weeks at a time, and I never said a thing. She only spent time with Matty when it served the purpose of her social media, and I let it go. But this time was too far.
“Hey,” I answered the call.
“I got your message. Where are you?”
If she got my message, she already knew the answer to that question. “I’m in Firefly.”
“Why?”
Again, if she’d listened to my message, this would be information she’d have. “For my sister.”
“You don’t have a sister.”
“Yes, I do. Remember, I told you my dad had an affair, and he had a child.”
“Yeah, but that’s not like your real sister.”
“Yes. She is.”
“What does she want?”
I exhaled. I didn’t know why she insisted on asking questions that she already had the answers for, but she did it a lot.
“She doesn’t want anything. Her mom died, and she named me as Chloe’s guardian.”
“Why?” Felicity’s tone was clearly offended. “Why would she do that?”
“I don’t know.”
I didn’t know a lot about Danielle Marsh before finding out about the affair and Chloe. I’d met her on several occasions when I’d visited my dad at the office. From what I remember, she’d grown up in Atlanta and moved to Firefly in her early twenties. That was about the extent of what I knew about her.
“Whatever,” she sighed. “When are you going back home?”
“We’ll be here for a while.”
“A while?”
“Yes.”
“How long is a while ?”
“At least until the summer.”
“Why?”
“Because Chloe is in the middle of her freshman year of high school. I’m not going to take her out of school and make her move to Phoenix. Her mom just died, and she doesn’t even know me or Matty. I’m going to stay here so she can finish out the year, and then we’ll figure out what’s best for her.”
“What about what’s best for Matty?”
“Matty’s in first grade. He’s fine. He’s excited to start a new school.”
“You can’t just make that decision. He’s my son, too.”
“You haven’t been home in almost ten months. We’ve been on this call for how long, and you haven’t even asked how he is once,” I pointed out.
“Don’t throw that in my face. I told you I needed time to myself. I’m still his mother.”
“I never said you weren’t.” I could feel my patience being chipped away by the second, and I didn’t want to say something I would regret. “I have to go. We can talk about this later.”
I hung up the phone while she was still talking. I tried Chloe once again, and again it went to her voicemail. I’d already gone by her mom’s place twice, but I figured I’d stop by there again. It seemed like the most obvious place she’d go, which was probably why she wasn’t there.
On the way back to my truck, I walked through the park. There was a group of teens sitting on the fountain; none of them were Chloe, but they could have been her friends. I had no idea. I didn’t know anything about her. I’d tried to figure out who her friends were through her social media, but all of her accounts were private, and she hadn’t accepted me as a friend.
“Hey,” I said as I approached the teens. “Have you guys seen Chloe Marsh?”
The girls shook their heads no, and the guys did a double take.
“Holy shit! Callum Knight.” The lanky kid with braces stood up. I heard you grew up here!”
“Yeah, I did.”
The kid with a red hat pulled out his phone and started filming. “I heard Martinez is coming out of retirement. Are you gonna fight him?”
What was this TMZ in the wild?
“Haven’t heard anything about that.”
I continued on, and as I passed by the large oak at the entrance of the town square, without even consciously meaning to, my eyes dropped to the base, and I saw the C + N with a heart circled around it I’d carved eighteen years ago. I couldn’t believe it was still there.
This entire town was like stepping into a time capsule. Everywhere I looked, there were memories of me and Nadia. We were together for almost ten years. As a teenager, that feels like a lifetime.
Last night, each spot I’d gone to search for Chloe held special significance for us. The pier where we’d met and shared our first kiss on the Ferris wheel. The beach where I’d worked as a lifeguard, and we’d hooked up in the cabana shed after hours. The caves where we’d camped out overnight. The drive-in where we’d lie on the grassy hill beside the parking lot and watch the movies even though we couldn’t hear them before we had cars. The dunes where I taught Nadia to drive using an ATV, and she flipped us…twice.
Then there was the lookout where she told me that she loved me for the first time. I’d been telling her I loved her for months at that point in our relationship, but she hadn’t said those words back to me. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing when she finally said those three words, so I asked in disbelief, “ You do ?” Nadia being Nadia quipped back a sassy, “ For now .” It became a running joke. Each time she told me she loved me, she’d always add the qualifier, “ For now .” That is until the first time we had sex. I told her I love you; she said it back, and I beat her to the punch saying, “ For now. ” But she surprised me, shook her head, and said, “ For always .” After that, we always added, “ For always ” after every declaration of love, signing every letter or text we wrote, or ending every phone call.
I even got the words tattooed on my chest over my heart. She’d never seen it, though, because I got it years after we broke up. I thought about getting them covered up, but since my feelings had never changed, I didn’t see the point.
After trying Chloe’s phone one more time, I got back into my truck, and after driving back by her old house, I was at a total loss of where to look and decided to head back to the farm. I’d been out looking for her the entire night. I’d spent seven hours searching the small town. The parade was going to start in two hours, so I would take a quick shower and then go see if I could find her there.
As I drove back home, I couldn’t help but feel a strange sense of déjà vu. It was so odd to feel as though nothing had changed, yet everything had. Aesthetically, the town looked exactly like it had when I left. Mature oak and birch trees shaded the streets. Colorful storefronts with striped awnings and welcoming shrubbery flanking the entryways lined the quaint downtown district. Black lantern lampposts every ten feet, with flower beds surrounding their bases and string lights hung between them, completed the small-town aesthetic. I never appreciated this place when I lived here. Growing up here, all I thought about was getting the hell out.
To an outsider, Firefly Island was an idyllic small southern town, with a breathtaking coastline, a charming trolley system that served as island transportation, and a web of picturesque canals and bike paths. To me, it was a suffocating population of less than five thousand that served as a network of spies who watched my every move and reported back to my father, who used the intel to berate me and support his theory that I was a disappointment.
The one upshot of the island was the fact that it drew a half million tourists every year, so there was a constant influx of new faces to disappear in. Firefly was world-renowned for its deep sea fishing, breathtaking beaches that lit up nightly with lightning bugs, a downtown area with both historic and arts districts, the tallest Ferris wheel in the East on Firefly Pier, and Abernathy Manor, an estate that regularly made “The Top Ten Most Haunted Places in The U.S.” lists and had been featured on several paranormal investigation and reality shows. During peak season, it was easier to get lost in the crowds and become more anonymous.
As I pulled into the farm with trees as far as the eye could see, I realized just like the town, I’d never appreciated growing up on a Christmas tree farm. It wasn’t until I was an adult that I could appreciate just how rare and lucky I was to be a part of so many people’s yearly traditions. Every year people came to cut down their trees, drink hot chocolate or cider, or buy one of my mom’s fresh-baked pies. I couldn’t count the number of people who had taken photos, and we’d even had weddings and proposals happen on the farm. But I never cared, because when I saw this place, it represented my dad, a man who I never was good enough for.
A twinge of guilt pinched my chest as I got out of the truck and walked up the wooden steps to the front door. Yesterday was the first time my son had been to the farm. He’d never seen the rows and rows of various pines, cedars, firs, and cypresses. I’d stayed away because of my own issues and deprived Matty of seeing his family legacy in Knight Christmas Tree Farm.
For all the reasons I wanted to leave town, none of them had anything to do with the farm. I loved working the land with my grandfather. Besides the trees, he always had dogs, cats, chickens, at least one horse, and sometimes goats. As an animal lover, it was not a bad way to grow up.
As an adult, I wanted to have pets of my own, but when I was fighting full time, I traveled so much; it wasn’t fair to any pet. Then once I retired, or semi-retired, I was going to get a dog for Matty to grow up with, but Felicity claimed that she was allergic.
I turned the doorknob, and before I even stepped inside, I was greeted by Bandit, a four-year-old Border Collie, and Betty Boop, a nine-year-old black long-haired Labrador Retriever. I bent down to say hi to them, and they greeted me with sloppy licks all over my face.
“Where you been all night?” my grandpa, who everyone, including myself, called Buzz, asked as he rounded the corner from the kitchen with his coffee mug in hand.
“I was out looking for Chloe.” Why did people insist on asking questions they already knew the answers to? As I stood, I realized that he was at the age his memory might be slipping, so even though he knew when I left exactly where I was going and what I was doing, I should probably double-check that she hadn’t come home since I’d asked him to call me if she did. “Chloe hasn’t come home, has she?”
“Nope. But I don’t see why you got your knickers in a twist. That little lady’s got a good head on her shoulders.”
“She’s thirteen,” I reminded Buzz.
“She’ll be ‘aight,” he dismissed.
His assurance meant nothing considering he had as much information as I did, which was that she snuck out of the house and her phone was either turned off or dead because it was going straight to voicemail.
Bruce “Buzz” Knight was the most laid-back man I’d ever known. I don’t think I’d ever seen him get upset, stressed, or ‘riled up’ as he liked to call it. Unfortunately, I’d inherited my temperament from my father, and not from him. It didn’t take much to get under my skin. I’d done everything I could not to react like my father had. I practiced meditation. I read books on anger management. I even went to therapy when I had Matty because I did not want to be the same father to him that I had.
“I don’t know why you’re makin’ such a fuss. She just lost her mama, so she went out with her friends for New Year’s Eve to blow off steam.”
“Exactly.” That was my fear.
“Is Chloe home?”
I turned around, and Matty was standing at the bottom of the stairs. His light brown bedhead hair was sticking up in all directions. One leg of his Batman pajama bottoms was scrunched up to his knee, and his other was down to his ankle. He rubbed his eye with his left hand as he yawned.
“Not yet, little man. You hungry?”
“Is she okay?” His arm dropped down to his side so he could have both hands free to double-barrel pet Betty and Bandit, whose tails were going a mile a minute with excitement at someone else joining in the morning festivities.
“She’ll be ‘aight.” Buzz repeated as he sipped his coffee with one hand and ruffled Matty’s hair with the other before patting his head.
Matty winced under the force of Buzz’s pat. The old man didn’t know his own strength. He might be in his late eighties, but he still worked his land every day. He wasn’t gym strong; he was manual labor strong. He also wore the same rings on his hand that he used to bop me and my friends with when we acted up, and they had some weight to them.
“Do you want some cereal?” I asked Matty.
Matty nodded.
I went to the kitchen and poured Matty a bowl of Cinnamon Toast Crunch, which was a staple my mom always kept because it was her favorite. I was just putting it down in front of him when I heard the door open.
My heart slammed into my chest as I walked around the corner and saw Chloe walking through the door.
“Chloe,” I breathed out in relief. Her long brown hair was in two French braids, her face was scrubbed clean with no makeup, and she was wearing a hoodie and sweats and slides. It didn’t look like she’d been out clubbing or anything.
She didn’t even spare me a glance; just walked right past me to the stairs as if I didn’t exist.
“Chloe,” I said a little louder.
She stopped but continued staring straight ahead.
“Where were you? I’ve been out all night looking for you.”
“I spent the night at my friend’s house,” her tone was clipped.
“I was worried about you. I went to the police?—”
“Oh my god!” Her head fell back dramatically. “You are so cringe.”
“You can’t just leave and not tell me where you are.”
Now she did turn toward me. Her eyes were filled with anger, and a single tear slid down her cheek as she seethed through a clenched jaw, “ You are not my dad.”
With that, she rushed up the stairs and slammed the door so hard the windows shook.
I stood staring at the empty space she’d just occupied, not sure what had just happened.
“Well, son, I think that went about as bad as it could.” Buzz winked at me as he lifted his cup in cheers.
“Dad, is Chloe mad at you?” Matty asked from the table.
Before I could respond, Buzz beat me to it. “Chloe just lost her mama; she’s mad at the world. You finish up that cereal, and let’s go feed Shadow.”
At the mention of feeding the horse, Matty’s face lit up. He was easy. He was six, and even though his mom had been in and out of his life, she was still around, and he’d always had me. Chloe never knew her dad—our dad. And she’d just lost her mom. She was thirteen, which, from what I’d heard, was the hardest time for girls, no matter what the circumstances were.
I’d had temporary custody of Chloe for twenty-four hours, and I was seriously fucking this up. I felt so out of my depth, so unqualified to be my sister’s guardian. I had no clue what to do or say.
There was someone I knew could help. One person I wanted to reach out to, either by picking up the phone, or even better, getting in my car to go and find her and ask what the hell I should do. She was my best friend. She was the person I told everything to. The person I confided in, told my dreams, my fears, my goals, and my insecurities to. Unfortunately, I hadn’t spoken to her in ten years because she was also the reason why I left town and hadn’t been back.