Callie #2
She’s not over this way much, by the river, and she’s struck by how open it feels, the horizon all water, the Atlantic in the distance.
She pulls up to his house, an 1800s cedar shingle with a big wraparound porch.
As she approaches the door she studies the porch furniture, red chairs covered in navy-striped cushions, and tries to decide whether she thinks they were picked out by a woman.
Yes, she thinks, and then she tries to guess how old they are. They look pretty new to her.
Adrian opens the door before she has a chance to knock. He stands back so she can come in, kisses her on the cheek, lets a hand linger on her hip. Stay there, she thinks. He pulls away with a smile, like he’s read her mind.
Inside there are wide plank-wood floors, a fireplace in the living room with a framed map over the mantel.
“It’s a survey of this area dating back to 1899.”
“You really are a dork for waterways,” she says, but leans in closer to take a look. “It’s cool.” She recognizes Atsion Lake, finds the creek behind the bait shop where Sabrina worked, the little cedar lake where her cabin sits. “What are those dots that are darker than the others?”
“Sinkholes. You ever been out to Blue Hole?”
“A few times. Was smart enough to keep my distance.” Looking at the map, it makes sense: The Pines is riddled with sinkholes, Blue Hole the most notorious. Seventy to eighty feet deep. A kid drowns every other year up there, drunk or high or just doing something dumb on a dare.
He flashes her a smile. “Don’t worry. We’ll stick to the rivers. You need anything before we go? I’ve got a few beers and packed some sandwiches. Marinated beets, avocado, hummus, Irish cheddar, toasted the bread so it won’t get soggy.”
“That sounds perfect.” She’s charmed by the extent of his planning.
She never ate around any of the men she used to hook up with back up North.
Fellow detectives always meeting up at odd hours, having a quickie.
It seems like an essential thing to know about a person, how they eat, what comforts and sates them.
As they make their way to the dock she tells him she likes his porch furniture. Can’t help herself. If she’s walking into what had recently been another woman’s home, another woman’s relationship, she needs to know about it, needs to get her disappointment out of the way.
“Oh yeah?”
“Who picked it out for you?”
“Oh come on, you don’t think I have good taste?” He hands her a lifejacket. “My sister helped with a few things when I moved in.”
“Ah.” She unclenches a little.
“You’d like her. She’s an ER nurse in Philadelphia. Sort of has the same no bullshit vibes as you. I would have been fine sitting on my ten-year-old camp chairs, but she told me to be a grownup and buy some real stuff once I had a mortgage.”
“Well I’m not really one to judge. I live in a one-bedroom cabin meant for seasonal visitors.”
“How’s the insulation? You get cold there during winter?”
“I haven’t been here long enough to know. I guess I’ll find out.” She doesn’t want to admit that she’s been wearing two pairs of socks and a jacket inside and technically it’s not even winter yet.
“I’ve got two fireplaces. Just saying.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.” He turns toward the boats and she finds herself blushing, and bubbling with panic on the inside.
She’s not good at this. It feels overwhelming, how direct he is, how he wants to lay claim, and part of her wants to turn and run but she talks herself down.
This is what people do, she reminds herself. They make room. They stay.
They paddle out toward the place where the river meets the ocean.
They don’t talk much, but the silence is easy, just the two of them and the rhythm of their paddles.
He points out where an eagle made its nest last spring, where in the summer, orchids bloom along an unassuming bank.
She watches his smooth, assured movements with the paddle, lets her eyes travel upward, thinks about what it would be like to press her mouth to the skin at the back of his neck.
Her arms and back are aching and she’s relieved when Adrian asks her if she’s ready to make a lunch stop.
They find a sandy stretch of riverbank, drag the boats onto land.
He takes a blanket from his pack, spreads it on the ground, cracks open a beer for her first, then his own.
They clink the bottles together and she savors the fizz, her whole body alive with sensation, her muscles humming with the work of paddling, the late fall sun warm on her face.
She feels his eyes on her when she takes off the lifejacket, and unlike all the other men who size her up—Fauver, the guys at the station, anyone she pulls over for a traffic stop—he makes it feel good to be looked at, studied.
She gestures to the blanket, to the spread he’s brought. “You certainly come prepared. Thanks for planning all this.”
“This is one of my favorite spots. I like to come out here when I’ve got something on my mind, usually a work thing that I can’t figure out.”
“Does it help?”
“A little change of scene usually does. Moving around. Something happens when you’re not thinking about the work, banging your head against the wall for an answer. Another part of your brain takes over. And then, not always, but a lot of the time, you find a little break. A way in.”
“I should come out here. That case is still making me crazy.” She hasn’t told him yet about Healy’s news about Baby Doe or how she wakes up at night, drenched in sweat, thinking about the possibility of being Billy Fauver’s daughter.
She will, but for now she just wants to be in this moment, savor the beer, the fall sunlight warm on her face.
“My kayaks are always tied up at the dock. You’re welcome to come any time.”
“What’s the last problem you came out here to think about?”
“Well, right now I’m trying to figure out whether this woman I’ve been seeing will think it is forward if I invite her to stay the night. She’s pretty cool, and I don’t want to blow it. But also … I would like to … well, I’ll be a gentleman.”
“Don’t,” she says.
“Don’t invite her?” His look is amused, playful.
“Don’t be a gentleman.” She presses her beer bottle into the sand and straddles him.
His hands are calloused from gripping the paddles but it feels good, the friction of his palms along her back, under her shirt.
They kiss like that for a long time, until the air becomes cool and the sun shifts above them, arcing back down to the west, and the contrast of their body heat against the cold air is addictive, sustaining.
Back at his dock they’ve barely tied up the boats before he takes her hand and pulls her toward the house.
They peel off their shirts, trip out of their pants, and fall onto the living room couch.
Their hands and cheeks are cold from the exposure to the wind.
His fingers taste like the river when she takes them into her mouth and his neck smells slightly of salt.
She straddles him again and he pulls back, laughs.
“I’m trying to kiss you but you keep smiling.”
“I’ll stop,” she says, smiling again. “Sorry.”
“Don’t. I’ll find something else to do with my mouth.”
As he kisses her ribs, and then the tender place just below her navel, her left inner thigh, then her right, she shivers, wonders why this feels so different.
She’s had good sex but it was never like this.
Hot, but also … easy. After, when they lie together, the leather couch sticking to their skin, she realizes she doesn’t remember the last time she slept with someone in a room filled with daylight.
The next morning she has to leave as the sun comes up even though she wants nothing more than to stay—an early shift, then to Jane’s so Damien can lead a canoe trip. Her hair smells like woodsmoke from the fire he built after dinner.
She kisses him goodbye, flush with sex and affection. He takes her by the wrist, puts his lips to the ends of each of her fingers. “Don’t go scaring the crap out of any more scientists, okay?”
“I only scare the hot ones.”
“That’s bad news, we’re a good-looking profession. Once you get over the glasses and hunchbacks.”
She kisses him again, putting her hands through his hair. “That’s true. But believe it or not, I’ve only got eyes for one of them.”
She gets her uniform on at home, brushes her teeth, pockets a granola bar, stops on her way to the station for a second cup of coffee. She’s still feeling bleary from the lack of sleep, but catches herself smiling in her rearview mirror like a fool.
At Wawa she gets a sixteen-ounce dark roast and is in line to pay when the cashier tells the girl in front of her that they can’t sell her cigarettes.
“Layla, I know your mother. I know you’re only fifteen.”
Layla. Layla Hart.
“Come on. I’ll just get them somewhere else anyway.” It’s early and she’s in cutoff jean shorts despite the cold, a sweatshirt thrown on top that nearly covers them, and a pair of work boots, the rubber treads worn down.
The cashier clears her throat and makes a point to cut her eyes to Callie standing there in her uniform so the girl turns too.
“Fuck it,” she says, narrowing her eyes on Callie. “Fine.”
When she turns, Callie notices the logo on her sweatshirt. Eden Grows. A picture of a tree, an apple, a rake in the foreground.
Callie reaches in with her card. “You know what? I’ll take a pack,” Callie says. Layla pauses and looks at her, wary.
The cashier just shrugs, blows out a puff of air that ruffles her bangs.
Layla leaves, but walks slowly, and Callie catches up outside the store.
“Hey. I’m glad you’re doing better. Last few times I saw you, you were in rough shape.”
“So what? You’re gonna act like I owe you something now?”
“No,” Callie says. She feels clumsy and awkward with the cigarettes in her hand. She holds them out. “But I was hoping I could ask you a few questions about where you get your stuff.” She gestures to the sweatshirt. “You work for Luke?”
“He’s got nothing to do with it,” Layla says. “He hates it when I’m high. Unless it’s the stuff he grows.”
“Your boss gets high with you?” She’s seen it in kids of cops, that same arrogance that Luke has. They think they’re untouchable. But Luke, a guy in his mid-fifties, getting stoned with his teenage employees? She hadn’t seen that coming.
Layla gives her a look that Callie can only classify as pitying. “There’s something you’re not telling me,” Callie says.
She takes the cigarettes from Callie. “The rest isn’t your business. I’m not in the game anymore but I know better than to talk to you. I’ve been warned.”
“Warned by who?”
Layla bites the inside of her cheek. For a second, her bravado falters. “Let’s just say there’s some vipers in these woods.”
Vipers. Snakes. A dark, undulating creature running down an arm. “Fauver? Is that who you work for?” She does her best to ignore the chill that overtakes her when she says his name.
“I don’t sell for anyone anymore, remember?”
Callie reaches into her bag for the folded missing poster with Jenna’s face on it, now creased into softness. “Did you ever sell to this woman?”
Layla studies the photograph. “I’ve seen her before. She bought me a six-pack at the gas station once.”
Of course she did, Callie thinks. “But you’ve never sold to her?”
“Nah. Never sold to her. Look, lady, I’ve said plenty. I gotta go now. Thanks for the smokes.” Layla starts to walk away and Callie can’t help herself.
“I hope you’ll get help. It’s not a way you want to live, what you’re doing.
I’ve seen enough to know that using, if you keep up with that stuff …
it’s going to become the only thing you’ll ever want.
What else do you want, Layla? I’m sure there’s something.
Probably a lot of things. And you deserve a shot at them. ”
Layla has gone still, turns slowly to face Callie again. She braces for another one of those furious, withering stares, but that’s not what she sees this time. For a second Layla’s lower lip betrays her. Trembles like the child she still is.
“Please, take care of yourself, okay? If not for yourself, then at least for your family, your friends. I only spent a little bit of time with Amanda but it’s so clear how much she loves you. I’m sure she’s not the only one.”
The look fades and Layla sets her jaw, hardens before Callie’s eyes. “My life and the people in it are absolutely none of your business.”
She stomps away and climbs into the passenger seat of a black Honda Accord, which reverses out of their spot and peels out of the lot like they’re being pursued.
Callie catches one last glimpse of Layla from the passenger-side window, as she traces her mouth in lipstick, smacks them together to admire the color in the rearview.
The color so bright as to be a warning, like the red of a poisoned apple in a fairy tale.