Chapter 17 #2
“Trying to see if Fern’s tattoo is a known brand. One of the officers I’ve been speaking to said he noticed a tattoo on a girl they picked up for solicitation. It was like a brand. Sometimes gangs mark their women. Was just following up on a line of inquiry.”
“Do you think that’s why she was kidnapped, for sex work?” Ava asked him.
“Really, I have no clue. I’m trying to find something that makes sense,” he said.
“Well, so far I haven’t seen anything. But she’s pretty heavily bandaged thanks to her wounds and the state she was found in,” Ava said. “You could check with one of the nurses.”
“Thanks. I’ll make a note to do that,” he said, and taking the mug of coffee that Ava had made him, he got to work answering emails and sending out inquiries. He could the sound of her voice in his bedroom and he realized that he could very easily get used to having her here.
He liked it. A lot.
Ava finished her session and then went to check on Gracie. It was such an ordinary day in spite of the storm raging outside. When she got back to the living room, Chay stood by the door where they had been last night.
“All good?” he asked.
“Yes. My other client postponed until next week, so that’s it. How about you?”
“I’m monitoring the radio and if there’s an emergency I might be called out, but the chief said I was good until the storm passed.”
“Nice. What do you usually do during snowstorms?” she asked as he draped his arm over her shoulder.
“Watch movies, I guess. I don’t have a routine,” he said.
“What? That’s not good. We always played rummy until a definitive winner was found,” Ava said.
“Definitive? Like some kind of championship?”
“Yes. When we were little, Dad would fill up a coffee mug with snow and that was the trophy.”
“Sounds prestigious.”
“It really was. So I haven’t been champ in a few years. How’s your rummy?”
“Never played.”
“What? You have been seriously deprived. It’s a fun game.”
“Says the woman who was a champion.”
“Only against my parents and brother. And I’m pretty sure Mom and Dad rigged it so Ryan and I each won at least one championship.”
“I play to win,” he warned her. “Still want to do this?”
“Oh, hell yes. Do you have a deck of cards?” she asked.
“What would you do if I said no?”
“Get the emergency deck from my glove box.” The grin on his face told her he was enjoying this.
Chay didn’t often let his guard down, and she liked it.
“Lucky for you I have one deck. They are from the Universal Studios in California. My boss got them for me when he went there on a trip.”
“Nice. Your boss here?” she asked as they both sat down at the kitchen table.
“In Salt Lake. Lawrence’s wife insisted on one vacation a year to someplace new. So he’d grumble about it and then come back looking relaxed and tan. I think she might have been on to something.”
“I think so, too. I pretty much use my vacation time for mental health days when I don’t feel like working,” Ava said as she shuffled the cards.
“I let it roll over until it expires,” he said.
“We are a couple of chumps. We should make a pact to use our vacation days this year,” she said.
“Together?”
That was a big one coming from Chay. Together? Why not? It wasn’t like she could foresee herself not getting along with him. Even if they were just friends and the dating thing didn’t work out. She knew she was still going to like him.
“Okay. Not until after we get Gracie sorted out.”
“Sorted out…how is that going to work? Won’t you miss her?”
“I will,” Ava admitted. She quickly explained how to play rummy and then dealt them each seven cards. “I wouldn’t have to miss her if the person who adopted her was a friend.”
“I don’t want to encourage you, but I have been thinking about her future,” Chay admitted as he rearranged the cards in his hand.
“Her future with you?” she asked.
“On the Navajo Nation. The family she lives with will be a part of this community. I know Grandmother is going to stay close to Gracie. I think I will, too. So we could still see her.”
Ava put her cards down in front of her. “I thought…don’t you want more than to be some casual person in her life?”
“You said you wouldn’t push.”
“I lied. No one is going to be a better father to her.”
Chay put his cards down, pushing back from the table, rocking his chair back up on two legs. “I didn’t have a father.”
“That’s an excuse. You already love her.”
“Do I?”
“Yes. You know it and so do I. You think about it. How will you feel if she calls someone else ‘Dad’ and not you?”
Chay opened and closed his mouth without uttering a word. “I don’t know. But what if I mess up? Her future could be wonderful. It should be. That’s what I want for her.”
“Me, too. That’s why I’m bringing up adoption again. To me you are the only one who could be her father. The one that she needs.”
“I don’t see it. I mean, you know I care for her, and having you both here…it’s making me want a home in a way that I never really have before.”
Ava went around and leaned against the table where he sat still rocked up on the back two legs of his chair. “That’s how I know you are meant to be with her. You wouldn’t feel strongly otherwise.”
“You seem so sure, but where does that leave you?” he asked.
She hadn’t really been prepared for him to turn the tables on her. “I…well, you and I are friends, so I’ll still be in her life.”
“Is that all we are? Friends?”
Ava chewed her lower lip, ready to dart back around the table when he took her hand in his. “Tell me, Ava. Show me the honesty that you pried from me. Do you want to just be my friend?”
“You know I want more,” she said, the words coming out of her rapid-fire. “There is a part of me that wants this moment to last forever. You and me and Gracie isolated form the world by the snowstorm. Just us relying on each other and taking care of each other.”
“But that’s a fantasy. Not the real world.”
“Exactly,” he said. “Now you understand where I’m coming from. This would be such a sweet life, but it feels like a dream. And dreams don’t last very long in the real world.”