Chapter Twenty-Eight
TWENTY-EIGHT
Callahan
Virtu is closed today, and since we still haven’t heard back after texting Roland’s cousin, Beau, Sunday morning about the goose, it’s tempting to spend all day in bed next to—and perhaps occasionally inside—Annie.
I’ve managed to convince her to stay over three nights in a row now, but it still isn’t nearly enough to satisfy my hunger for her company; I’m insatiable when it comes to being around her, greedy for more of her softness, more of her warmth.
More of those tranquil hours simply holding each other, talking about anything and everything.
Adding to my ever-growing, never-complete collection of Things to Adore About Annie O’Neill, and offering her small pieces of myself I forgot I even possessed, much less thought to give over to anyone before.
But a glance at my phone reminds me that it’s the third Tuesday of the month, which is when I have tea with Graham’s partner, Francis.
It’s a tradition we started after Graham died, wanting to be in the company of someone else who understood the depth of our grief.
Now it’s more of a check-in, a way to stay connected to each other like Graham would have wanted.
And we’ve grown closer over the years because of it.
Fran can never be what Graham was to me, but, along with Harold and Inés, he’s the closest thing to family I have now.
“I’m supposed to go visit a friend this afternoon,” I tell Annie as I tuck a strand of hair behind her ear, uncovering her face.
She looks like she’s about to drift off again, and I can’t help but feel some pride in having managed to both exhaust and relax her since closing up the shop yesterday evening and heading upstairs.
“But I can cancel if you want.” Or you could come with me, I almost suggest. But it’s too soon for the added pressure of introducing her to the important people in my life.
Especially when she still won’t acknowledge that this is anything more than two friendly acquaintances doing each other a solid, by, uh, doing each other.
She sits up and stretches her arms over her head, unconcerned as the duvet falls to her waist. “No, go and have fun,” she says through a yawn.
“Besides, I want to clean the screen up a bit before I take it out of its frame. And I should probably go shower and change clothes.” She turns her head and sniffs at her armpit. “Yikes. I should definitely go shower.”
“I like the way you smell right now,” I say, taking her wrist to keep it in place and trailing kisses down the underside of her raised arm.
Annie swats at me playfully. “Ew. You’re gross. Go away.”
“Fine,” I say, moving to get out of the bed. Before I have both feet on the ground, Annie wraps her arms around my neck, pressing her naked body against my back. Her fingers find my jaw and turn my head so she can slip her tongue into my mouth.
“I thought you told me to go away?” I manage when she ends the breath-stealing kiss.
“Did you think I’d let you go without saying goodbye?”
“If that was goodbye, maybe you should remind me how you say hello…”
“Later,” she promises, dodging me as I try to reach for her.
It’s so easy to imagine I can still feel Annie’s wide grin pressed against my shoulder as I make the familiar short drive up I-83 to Francis’s midcentury-built asymmetrical house in Mount Washington.
I park on the street and, like always, take a look around for any new hazards or needed repairs as I approach the front door.
Because Graham thought of me as a son, Francis always did too.
So I feel it’s my duty to look out for him as he ages, at least in the small ways he’ll let me.
When I ring the doorbell, I’m answered with the usual hollered “It’s open!
” Which absolutely nettles me, because even though he insists he only does it when he’s expecting a visitor, it isn’t safe for him to keep the door unlocked.
But that’s a conversation we’ve had enough times that I know I’m not going to change his mind if I bring it up again today.
“Fran?” I call out as I hang my outerwear on the coat stand—Austrian, late nineteenth century, and one of Graham’s last acquisitions at auction.
“Solarium,” he returns, and I stroll down the hallway to the glass-enclosed room at the back of the house.
He’s seated in one of the high-backed wicker chairs, the tea tray set out on the table between it and the matching seat to the other side.
Francis beams as I sit down. “Good afternoon, Dodger,” he says, and my heart stutters at the nickname Graham gave me so long ago.
It’s short for Artful Dodger—a tongue-in-cheek reference to my failed attempt at stealing from Virtu during our first meeting.
Francis is now the only one who uses it.
“You’re looking mighty well,” he continues, sounding so pleasantly surprised it’s a bit insulting. “Things are good at the store?”
I mentally add up the massive sale Annie made last week, and the few other relatively small ones we’ve managed in the days since.
“Yeah, pretty good. It’s been steady.” I haven’t decided yet whether I should mention the goose situation, so I instead fill him in on Harold and Inés’s elopement—apparently much less of a surprise to him than it was to me—and how they’re out of the country until December.
“You’re alone, then?” Though I know Francis means alone at Virtu, it strikes me that, even if he was asking more generally, for the first time in forever I don’t feel like I am.
“No. Not alone. Harold’s niece is in town to help out.”
“Hm. I don’t believe I’ve met her,” Francis says, handing me the cup of tea.
“She’s proven herself to be…” I trail off, unable to find the right word to describe Annie O’Neill. Nothing quite encompasses the maddening wonder of her. But not finishing my sentence is becoming a bit too conspicuous so I settle on an extremely insufficient “…capable.”
“Oh. I see.” Francis lets out a warm laugh. “You like the young lady, eh? Well, isn’t that a pleasant development! And explains that glow about you a bit better than the store having a good sales month.”
I groan as I feel heat overtake my face. It’s strange to be teased like I’m a gangly teenager with a silly crush on the coolest girl in school, even though that’s pretty much what I feel like at the moment. I try to hide my blush behind a long swig of tea, which scalds my throat as it goes down.
“Well? Do you know if the feeling is mutual?” he asks.
I answer slowly. “It’s…mutual. Or mutual-ish. I think.”
Francis’s graying eyebrows raise in pointed question.
“We’ve become, uh, physically involved,” I admit. “But she’ll only be in town until Harold and Inés get back, so we agreed to keep it a casual thing. Friends with benefits, I guess.”
“And yet…” Francis prompts.
I scratch at my chin and find it thickly coated with stubble.
I must’ve forgotten to shave this morning, my routine thrown off by the naked woman bent over my couch, digging around in search of her missing pair of panties.
“I can’t really figure out if that’s what we’re doing or not.
She says it’s nothing serious, but it feels real serious.
But maybe it’s just that I don’t have the experience to know what’s what.
My only frame of reference for this stuff is what it was like with Nicole, and obviously that was so different. ”
“Different how?” he asks.
“Well, I knew Nic for ages, and I practically just met Annie.” Saying this aloud makes me realize just how much has happened in my life in such a short span of time—Nicole’s phone call, taking the goose to research it, meeting Annie, losing the goose, kissing Annie, touching Annie, tasting Annie…
Oh right, Francis and I were having a conversation.
“And, probably because we started as friends and intended to be together forever, things between Nicole and me always felt really…settled, I guess. But with Annie they’re…
well, they’re unsettled, in a way that makes me feel…
” Fully alive. “Pushed out of my comfort zone,” I say instead.
“But in a good way. It’s really…I think it’s good. ”
Francis is quiet for a moment, looking at me with a glint in his bright blue eyes. Finally he says, “Did I ever tell you about my mother’s famous ginger cookies?”
I frown at the non sequitur and shake my head.
“Ah,” he says, and pinches his thumb and index finger together. “Perfectly balanced sweetness and zing. A texture somewhere between chewy and pillowy, with a slight crispiness at the edges. She won first place with them at the Mississippi State Fair three years in a row.”
I have no idea what this has to do with what we were discussing. Maybe Francis’s mind isn’t as sharp as I thought. “Um, they sound great.”
“They were incredible. When she passed in 2005, one of the things that hit me hardest was that I’d never get to eat those cookies again.
So I decided to try to re-create them, to make them myself as a way to keep her memory alive.
” Francis lets out a small huff of laughter.
“But I couldn’t get them right for the life of me.
I made so many batches of ginger cookies, but none of them were quite the same as the ones I remembered swiping straight off the baking sheet as a boy.
” He shifts in his chair, crossing his long, spindly legs.
“I don’t know if you recall, but about a year before we lost Graham, we visited with some of my extended family back in Mississippi. ”
I nod. “Yeah, I remember.”
“We stayed with my mother’s sister, and before we left, I said, ‘Aunt Elisabeth, do you happen to know my mama’s recipe for ginger cookies? Because I have been having the darndest time trying to figure out how to make them.’ And you know what she said to me?”
“What did she say?”
“She laughed and said, ‘Oh, Frankie, she never followed a recipe. Little of this, little of that. She always just made it up as she went along.’ ”
“Oh. Um, okay.”
He leans on the arm of his chair, closer to me.
“You see, Dodger, the reason I couldn’t replicate my mother’s cookies is because each time I attempted it, I was comparing it to every past batch, every previous iteration, rolled into one elusive memory I was holding up as the gold standard.
There was never going to be a way to find what I was looking for because it never actually existed.
They tasted right because she’d made them, and I was never going to be able to capture that, as much as it broke my heart. ”
“That’s a very touching story, Fran, but—”
“What I’m trying to say,” he says, talking forcefully over me, “is that, in the pursuit of that elusive ginger cookie, every batch that didn’t come out exactly how I remembered felt like failure, no matter how delicious they were.
You’ve got to remember to assess each cookie on its own merits, Callahan. ”
I am only vaguely following along with this metaphor. “What if my problem is that I’m not sure if I know how a cookie is supposed to taste because my cookie-eating experience is somewhat limited?”
“Does it matter if it tastes how it’s supposed to as long as it’s something you want to eat?”
“I…guess not?” This is all going to take a lot more thinking through than what I’m capable of with Francis staring at me expectantly. “Thanks. For that. I’ll…consider what you’ve said.”
“Good man.” He pats my knee affectionately. “Now, tell me what else is new.”
I hesitate for a moment, then realize that with Harold and Inés away, Francis is the only person who would be available to bail me and Annie out of jail if the need arises. “What do you know about the Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918?” I ask.
Before Francis can respond, my phone buzzes with a text from Annie: Finally heard back from Beau. Meeting at Lucky Duck diner at 4pm.