Chapter Fourteen
DAY FIVE
FRIDAY
After a few hours of sleep, I woke while it was still dark, with words in my head.
I got those down, but as daylight strengthened, the good writing stretch ended.
Done.
Kaput.
Gone as fast as it had arrived.
I tried reading over what I’d written, without spotting any inspiration for what came next.
I tried jumping ahead, except I produced only scraps of ideas.
I tried typing out questions to the characters — mostly the main character, Alex — asking what was holding her back. She wouldn’t answer. Maybe she couldn’t. Maybe that was her whole problem.
But if she couldn’t and I didn’t have the answers, what did that leave me with?
That was when my earlier thoughts about the character’s past and my past and Teague’s past resurfaced.
That naturally reminded me of a little research I’d done during a writing break yesterday.
Or the day before.
Reality’s timeline during my good writing stretch was murky.
Plus, I’d been distracted by having Kit’s voice in my head at the time from a previous conversation.
“Secrets weary of their tyranny,” she’d said in that earlier conversation — and said again now in my head.
She’d also said, “James Joyce wrote that in Ulysses. What’s most interesting about it is that to become weary, the secrets first must build their tyranny.”
I’d heard something in her voice. “Kit, when you ended our arrangement, were you feeling responsible or—”
“My idea, my responsibility. In the past now.”
That had ended that discussion.
The past.
It did keep coming up.
I looked at the paper where I’d written the result of my research during that writing break.
A phone number.
Not from my past, but Teague’s. Were those secrets weary of their tyranny?
Not letting myself think about it, I made the call.
* * * *
“Quincy.”
Teague’s former partner answered the phone the same way I’ve heard Teague do when the sheriff’s department called — O’Donnell.
It was not using only the last name, or the directness. It was a declaration that he was alert, prepared. As if he’d said, “O’Donnell, reporting for duty,” but not needing the extra words.
Hearing all that in the one-word response on the other end of the phone now stopped me for half a beat.
I suddenly realized I didn’t know if Quincy was his first or last name, adding more beats to my silence.
Teague called him Quincy. Clara called him Quincy. I’d swear I’d heard Ned refer to him as Quincy, the two of them having been introduced by Clara, who’d tracked down Quincy during a visit she and Ned made to the Chicago area.
She hadn’t hesitated to ask him out to lunch and they seemed to have become fast friends.
Me? I’d hesitated for months to ask Teague about him, much less introduce myself. Now I hesitated to respond to his greeting.
By this point, the beats of me being stopped had piled up.
“Who is this?” the voice on the other end said.
“Oh, sorry. Sorry. I— My name’s Sheila Mackey. I’m . . .”
I stumbled over how to describe myself in relation to Teague. Not long ago I’d debated using boopsie-doodle, but that would have been to irritate one of his colleagues at the sheriff’s department.
I didn’t want to irritate Quincy.
Also, that debate happened months ago, before I’d told Teague the major secret of my past. I hadn’t stumbled over such labels since.
“I know who you are,” Quincy said.
And then, while I put aside sorting out names (his) or descriptions of relationships (mine), a new silence developed.
His, this time. I was grateful it was nearly as long as mine.
“Clara said you’d call,” he finally added.
“She what?”
I deliberately had not talked to her about this, deliberately had not asked her for his phone number, instead, had used skills I’d learned from Kit to find the number myself.
Okay, it hadn’t been that hard. I knew the jurisdiction name and police departments tend not to hide their contact information.
“Not like you’d call me today. She didn’t say that. But sometime. Unless that idiot got his head screwed on completely straight first. Which obviously, he hasn’t.”
Simultaneously, I felt a surge of protectiveness over Teague, his head, and whether the threads of the screw top attaching it to the rest of him were correctly aligned, along with a strong desire to agree with Quincy.
“I . . . I shouldn’t have called.”
If Teague had wanted us to meet he’d have made it happen. What right did I have to—?
“Sure you should have.” Quincy made it casual and calming, backing way off the tough love toward Teague of his previous comment. Even knowing this had to be part of his soothe-skittish-witnesses toolkit, it worked. “It’s a pleasure to meet you. I’m real glad you reached out to me.”
“It’s nice to put a voice to the name,” I said.
“Exactly. Call any time, Sheila. Doesn’t have to be for a specific reason. To say hello is good.”
We both knew this wasn’t about calling to say hello.
I could feel myself backing away as he spoke. Not because of what he said, but because my brain kicked into high gear with what-ifs.
I’d bet he’d been aware of that happening before I was.
He added, “Just like Clara does. Always good to hear from her.”
“Thank you, Quincy.” For his smoothing over my calling and my backing away, for leaving the door open, but most of all for being a good friend to Teague.
We wrapped up the call like all this was normal.
Afterward, I stared into space.
His comment about Clara left the door open, possibly more than he knew.
True, she didn’t know about my secret past as the supposed author of Abandon All.
But she did know something happened at Teague’s previous department that left him legally blind in one eye and led to his leaving his profession and his home to come here to Northern Kentucky.
Did she know the what and the how? Had she asked Quincy and he’d told her?
No.
Because she would have told me.
Because the reason she would have wanted to know was because she thought I needed to know.
Because she didn’t know how much I’d been keeping from him and was still keeping from her.
Nothing like knots on top of knots and more knots in your personal life to make you forget a little thing like the writing flow going kaput.
* * * *
I was not tempted to skip the dog park.
Perhaps hearing that in my voice, Clara trusted me to drive myself, Gracie, and Murphy to meet her and LuLu at the park.
Clara pulled in next to my car shortly after I arrived.
She looked over at me, did a double-take, then rolled down her passenger window, gesturing for me to roll down mine.
“You look awful,” she said.
“Thanks.”
“When we’re done here, we’ll drop the pups at my house to sleep off their playtime, while we treat ourselves to a pastry at the café.” She squinted at me. “Multiple pastries.”
I didn’t argue as we unloaded dogs.
Only Clara, Teague, and Kit knew I was trying to write.
I’d told Teague and Kit, though each already had figured it out. Clara caught me in mid-write. She wasn’t surprised.
Their knowing gave me people to vent to about writing.
Except Kit. She classified venting as whining and didn’t tolerate whining.
With Teague out of town, I shouldn’t overload Clara. On the other hand, these dogs’ playing endurance meant I wouldn’t last through the whole session.
Why delay the inevitable?
So I was venting — not whining — as we entered the large dog section.
“I know the main character, Alex, has a block about trusting — other people and herself, mostly herself — but I can’t figure out why. I know it has to do with the past, but what specifically about the past I can’t figure out.”
“Haven’t.”
“What?”
“Not that you can’t figure it out. You haven’t. Yet and— Oh, look. Donna’s still here.”