Chapter 4 #2
“Where I’m from, the last thing you want is for the ch?????dii to find you—-the spirit of the person who died. If they haunt you, they can’t get to the underworld. When my grandfather’s grandfather died, they even moved house.”
“So these ch?????dii . . . aren’t like Casper?”
“I don’t know a Casper”—-Kai frowns—-“but nah, ch?????dii are not nice. They attach to you, and boom, you’re sick. Or you get into a car accident. Or there’s a fire in your town. They’re all the unbalanced bits of a person, left behind.”
If there are any parts of my father floating around, they are definitely unbalanced.
“So what do you do, Georgia Gilligan? When you’re not in Piedmont Park being a human sponge?”
That makes me smile a little. “I transcribe medical records.”
“Fascinating.”
“Not really,” I say.
“Then why do it?”
I start to answer but then catch myself. It is deceptively easy to talk to Kai Yazzie, and I need to keep my guard up. This man is not just a stranger with a good heart.
He’s also a cop.
I pull the blanket from my shoulders. “I should probably go home.”
“Keep it,” he says, gesturing to the blanket. “Police issue. You probably paid for it, with taxes. I’ll drive you.”
“Oh, you don’t have to—-”
He throws a handful of bills on the table. “Actually, pretty sure it’s in the job description, even if I’m off duty.”
In the police cruiser, he turns up the heat, because I’m still damp. When he asks me for my address, he turns toward my house without needing directions.
Kai pulls to the curb.
“Thank you for the tea. And the blanket.” I reach for the door handle. “How do you say goodbye in Navajo?”
“There isn’t a word for it. Goodbye means gone. We say hágoónee’—-I’ll see you again. Because no one ever really goes away permanently, do they? Something they said or did always sticks with you.”
I think of Molly, her hair braided in a red ribbon in her graduation photo. I think of how I would sing “You Are My Sunshine” to get her to sleep, and I wonder if, even now, when she hears that song, she feels peace. “That’s beautiful,” I murmur.
Kai looks at me. “Yes,” he says.
I am finishing a transcription three days later when my doorbell rings. Through the peephole, I see that Kai is standing there in his blue uniform, a gun holstered at his waist. He holds a wilting bouquet of daisies.
I argue with myself about opening the door, hesitating long enough that by the time I do, Kai has placed the flowers on the welcome mat and is halfway down the drive. “Oh,” he says, turning. “I just came by to make sure you’re all right.”
“I’m fine,” I tell him. I lift the flowers. “What are these for?”
“Because I didn’t think I’d get lucky enough to find you at home,” Kai says. He tips the brim of his hat, gets into his car, and drives away.
The flowers are handpicked, wrapped in pink tissue paper. As I unwrap them a card falls out. It has a phone number on it, and one short sentence: Siláo bich’i’ hólne’!
Frowning, I carry the card to my computer and carefully type in the unfamiliar words to search the meaning.
Call the police!
A bubble of laughter bursts from me. It’s been nearly twenty years since a man brought me flowers, particularly a man my fingers are aching to draw. Kai’s obsidian eyes, the long, sharp lines of his jaw, the span of his shoulders—-I know what this means, and figure it will not end well.
If I thought it was bad when Edward researched the mysterious Georgia Gilligan, why would I ever date a cop?
I take the card with the phone number and throw it in the trash, along with the daisies.
Then I sit down at my computer again and force myself to transcribe three more records before I pad back into the kitchen and fish the flowers out of the garbage.
I put them into a vase, then pluck the card out, too.
Kai answers on the first ring. “You’re clever,” I say. “Call the police.”
“And you’re smart. Not to mention excellent at following directions.”
I feel a smile tug at my lips. “I don’t have a crime to report.”
“No? Then I better work harder to steal your heart.”
“Oh God.” I groan. “Please tell me that line doesn’t work on other women.”
“I’m workshopping it.” His voice gets smokier. “So what do you think, k’aalógii?”
“K’aalógii,” I repeat. “What does that mean?”
“You’ll have to say yes to dinner if you want to find out.”
This is a terrible idea. “Yes,” I say.
Kai is a study in contradictions: He is obsessed with technology and always gets the new iPhone on the day it arrives, but he also burns cedar in his apartment for cleansing.
He grew up on a reservation with his mother, who weaves traditional blankets for sale, but he always dreamed of settling down in a city.
When he was shot on the job by a drug dealer, he had surgery at a hospital and also had a medicine man in New Mexico chant a healing ceremony.
He straddles two different worlds without losing his balance, and this draws me toward him.
He also kisses like a summer storm, coming out of nowhere and leaving me electrified.
When I tell Ximena this on our daily FaceTime, she asks me how I haven’t slept with him yet.
I know we are headed there. My body craves him, even as my mind reminds me this is a Very Bad Idea.
But for now, we simply trade bits and pieces of ourselves.
I draw a little sketch of him that he tapes up in his locker at work.
He says k’aalógii—-his nickname for me—-means butterfly.
I give him the usual story about my past. He tells me about his ex, Deena, who gaslit him.
“She’d say she was going out with the girls, and I couldn’t come.
And then she came home smelling like aftershave.
I mean,” Kai says, “honesty is a pretty low bar, don’t you think? ”
I nod and change the subject.