Chapter 15
MAX
Iwake at five.
She is asleep on her side, one hand under her cheek, the other on my stomach low where the scar is.
The lamp is off. The rain stopped somewhere in the night.
Grey light is at the edge of the curtain.
Her hair is on the pillow and on the front of my shoulder and on her own mouth.
I lift the strand off her mouth with the back of one finger and I move it.
I lie still under her hand.
I did not get up early this morning. I do not have a shift. I have a meeting at nine downtown with Val and Kessler and the arson board, and the meeting is the meeting that will tell me whether Val has held the line another forty-eight hours.
I am letting myself have an hour in this bed because I do not know what kind of woman is going to drive away from this cabin at seven a.m.
I let her sleep.
I lie under her hand and I count the shape of my life.
I let myself look at her.
She is startlingly beautiful all the time.
She has a small bruise at the inside of her left thigh from the table.
She has a small bruise at her hip where my hand was.
Her lower lip is faintly swollen on the side I bit.
Her hair is darker at the temple. She is the most beautiful thing in this room and the room is full of beautiful things, the cedar ceiling and the brass lamp and the quilt my grandmother stitched, and she is more beautiful than any of them.
The things we did sexually in the kitchen last night. I have enjoyed a lot of sex in my life, but never as much as I am with her. There is an innocence to her, a curious light in her that burns so brightly and I just love to watch her come apart for me.
I bend and I kiss her shoulder.
She makes a small sleep sound.
I get up.
---
I make coffee.
I bring two cups back. I set hers on the table on her side. I sit on the edge of the bed.
"Hey." I say and she murmurs in response. Half asleep, her eyelashes flicker awake.
“I made coffee."
She murmurs again.
"Open your eyes, baby.”
She opens one eye. She looks up at me. Her face does the small thing it has started to do when it sees me, which is a thing I do not have a word for and am not in any hurry to have a word for.
"Hi,” she says and her voice is raw and gravelly and thick with sleep.
"Hi."
She sits up. The quilt slides. I put the cup in her hand. She drinks.
"Good," she says.
I smile and nod.
"What time is it?”
"Five-twenty."
"You don't have a shift today?”
"No."
“Oh, I remember. You have the meeting."
“Yes, at nine."
She drinks and looks thoughtful. She looks at me over the rim. I look back.
"Give me your hand," I say.
She holds out her left hand.
The bandage has come loose along the bottom edge from the kitchen and from the bed and from her palm against my back.
I unwrap it. Her palm is healing. The cut is not weeping.
The skin around it is pink and clean. I dab it with the cloth from the basin.
I put fresh ointment on. I wrap it new. I tie it the way I tied it Tuesday morning, snug, not tight, the knot to the inside of her wrist where she will not catch it.
"Tomorrow you can leave it off," I say.
She lifts the wrapped hand and she looks at it. She looks at it like a thing I have given her. She lowers it. She nods.
"Max."
"Yes."
"Thank you."
"Stop saying thank you.”
"No." She shakes her head.
I look at her. She is in the bed wearing nothing, with the quilt at her hips, with the cup in her good hand and the bandage bright on the other, and her hair is on her shoulder, and her eyes are on me, and I do not have a defense for the way she says no to me when I tell her to stop thanking me.
I have not had a defense for it since Tuesday.
"Drink your coffee," I say.
"Yes, Max."
She is teasing me. She has not teased me before this morning. The tease is a small new thing in the room and I let it sit there and I do not chase it.
I get up. I go to the closet. I take down a black shirt and black trousers that Val likes me in for meetings with Kessler. I lay them on the chair next to the strap that I washed up after she slept last night I didn’t put it away. I stand looking at the chair.
"You're staring at the chair," she says.
"I am."
"Why?” She is curious. She is always curious.
“Fond memories.” I smile at her and look at her in a way that says fond memories of fucking you every which way with it last night.
She laughs. She knows what I mean.
It is the first time I have heard her laugh in this house at five a.m. The laugh is small and honest and tired. It is a sound I would put in a jar if I could.
"Get dressed," she says. "I'll make you breakfast."
"You don't have to."
"I want to,” she says, and I know it is true.
She gets out of the bed. She puts on my henley.
She pads to the kitchen. I hear her start the kettle and open the bread bin.
I stand in the bedroom in my underwear holding a black shirt and I listen to the woman I am in love with make me breakfast in my kitchen and I decide that whatever happens at the meeting at nine, I am driving back here at six tonight and not before.
I get dressed.
---
I leave at seven.
She walks me to the porch. She is in the henley and a pair of my sweats and bare feet.
I have told her three times to put socks on and she has not put socks on.
She kisses me at the door. She kisses me the way she kissed me at the kitchen counter Tuesday night when I came in, which was the kiss of a woman who had been thinking about it all day, and the kiss this morning is the kiss of a woman who has been thinking about it all night.
"Drive safe," she says.
"Yes."
"Come home to me,” she says and I feel a tight clutch in my groin at her words.
"Yes."
"What time?”
"Six. Maybe seven."
She smiles.
"Go," she says.
I go.
I drive down the county road in the morning light. The pines are wet from the rain. The road is quiet. I drink the coffee she put in my travel cup. The cup says RCFD Station 9 on the side. She put it in my hand at the door.
I think about the kiss on the porch.
I think about it the whole forty miles. I think about it because the woman I am driving to meet is going to look at my face in the morning light and the kiss is the thing on my face this morning, and I have to put the kiss away before I get to Val's office.
I park in a lot two blocks from the building.
I sit in the truck with my hands on the wheel.
I do the thing I have been doing for three days.
I put the cabin away. I put Evangeline away.
I put the brass key and the bandage and the laugh away.
I put the woman in my henley making me breakfast away, into a small pocket inside my chest, and I close the pocket.
I sit with my hands on the wheel for ninety seconds.
I get out.
I go in.
---
Val is in the meeting room.
Kessler is there. Two people from the arson board I have seen twice. A man from the city attorney's office in a brown suit. And at the far end of the table, in a navy jacket and her hair pinned at the back of her head, Elise Warren.
I have not seen Elise Warren since November.
She looks at me when I come in. She does not smile. She does not nod. Her eyes pass over me the way her eyes pass over every body in a room, as a thing she is cataloguing for later.
I take the chair Val taps.
It is the chair to her left.
Val starts.
She runs the meeting the way she runs every meeting.
She does it the way a woman runs a thing she has run for fourteen years.
She walks Kessler's report. She walks the timeline.
She walks the structural assessment of the east wing.
She walks the medical examiner's findings on Daniel Clark.
She walks the missing-persons status of Evangeline Clark.
She does not look at me when she walks the missing-persons status. I do not look at her.
Elise Warren listens.
Elise Warren does not write anything down.
Val finishes the walk-through. She looks at the city attorney. The city attorney nods. The arson board nods. Elise Warren puts her hands flat on the table.
"Chief."
“Ms. Warren.”
"I have a question about your timeline on the engine response."
"Go ahead."
"You have Engine 9 arriving at oh-three-eleven."
"Correct."
"The 911 call came in at oh-two-fifty-three."
"Correct."
"Eighteen minutes."
"Correct."
"Engine 9 is six miles from that house."
"Six and a half."
"Six and a half. That's a long eighteen."
"It is a long eighteen."
"Why is it a long eighteen, Chief."
The room is quiet.
I sit still in my chair.
Val puts her hand flat on the folder. She does not hesitate. She does not blink.
"The probie was driving."
"The probie."
"Pierce. First call out. He took a wrong turn at the third light because the GPS in 9 has been routing through the bridge that's been closed since Friday. We've put in a request for the GPS update twice. I have the requests on file."
"You have the requests on file."
"Yes."
"I'd like a copy."
"Done."
Elise Warren writes that down.
She writes it down without looking at the pen.
"Chief."
"Detective."
"I have one more question."
"Go ahead."
"Lieutenant Max Hale was at the scene before Engine 9."
I do not move.
"Yes," Val says.
"Off-duty."
"Off-duty."
"Driving home from her cabin."
"Driving home from the cabin."
"Lieutenant Hale”?
I look at her.
"Detective."
"What time did you leave your cabin Monday night?” Elise Warren is a sniffer dog.
"Around midnight."
"You didn't sleep?”
"Not well."
"Why not?”
"I don't sleep well. It's in my file."
"It's in your file.” Elise Warren is skeptical but I don’t back down on my story.
"Yes, Detective."
"You drove forty miles to get back to the city at midnight because you don't sleep well?”
She doesn’t believe me, but she can’t prove that I am lying.
"Yes, Detective."
"And you happened to see the smoke column from the road?”
"Yes, Detective."
She looks at me.
I look at her.