Chapter 2 Callie
For all these years I have kept the letter from my brother folded in a paper envelope, sealed three weeks before he died, with one instruction across the front in his own hand: if you ever cross paths with Kane Maddox, this goes to him, Cal, and no one else.
He underlined "Kane" twice and "no one else" three times. Danny didn't mark words for emphasis. The lines were him saying more than the page could hold.
For eight years I never crossed paths with Kane Maddox.
I went to college. I lost Grandma the summer after I graduated high school.
I learned to live in apartments where the heat clanked at three in the morning and the kitchen sink dripped no matter what the landlord said.
I'm almost through a degree in psychology now.
I've built a quiet, ordinary life out of nothing, with the letter in my bag the whole time.
Two weeks ago Kane Maddox called me.
His voice on the phone matched the man my brother had described in his letters. Six minutes of words. The road to take out of Bozeman, a name, an address, and one sentence I keep going back to: You need to come, Callie. There are things I would rather say to you in person.
He didn't actually have things to say to me in person, and by the third sentence I understood the real shape of the call: whatever the trouble was, he could only deal with it if I was close. I came as soon as I could, because he had finally found me, and I'd been waiting eight years to be found.
This afternoon I drove the last hour through pine forest and a town I had never seen, parked in front of his garage, and walked through the side door.
He was waiting inside. The man on the other end of that phone call has long dark hair tied up at the crown, a full dark beard, and tattoos that climb the side of his neck out of the collar of his coveralls.
He fills the back of the shop and makes the room feel smaller.
Heat moves up my throat and into my face.
I forget what I am about to say or ask. My brother warned me his eyes could end a room.
Nobody warned me what they would start in me, or how quickly, or how far below the belt.
Now he's at the coffee maker on the bar cart at the top of the mezzanine, and I'm by the railing looking down at the bays where Jaxson has gone back to work and the welder has lowered his mask. The bag is on the dark leather couch where Kane set it down.
"Black?" he asks.
I turn. "With cream if you have it."
"There's cream."
He pours two mugs and brings me one, careful enough that our fingers don't touch when he hands it over. He's keeping his distance from me on purpose. He stands four feet away with his mug between his hands, but he can't take his eyes off me.
I open my mouth and close it again, because he called me and the first words should be his. So I wait, but he doesn't fill the silence.
"So... why am I here, Kane?"
A door opens behind me before he can answer, and a voice that hasn't finished cracking says, "Oh, sorry, I thought Bear was up here. Oh, hi, hi, sorry... heh, let's pretend I wasn't here."
The guy has a rag over one shoulder, a Coke in his hand, and a face he hasn't fully learned how to control. His eyes go from Kane to me to Kane again.
"Toby," Kane says.
"Yep. Going. Gone." He backs out fast and the door closes behind him.
Kane sets his mug down on the bar cart. He doesn't smile or apologize for the interruption. He looks at me, the question still unanswered, and what he gives me isn't the answer I asked for.
"You're not driving back Saturday."
My plan was three days, no more. He just changed it.
"What... How long should I stay?"
"I don't know yet."
"That's not an answer. A week? A month?"
"At least a week. Maybe longer. I'll know more in the next few days."
"Kane, you called me because of Danny. You used his name. That doesn't entitle you to a blank check on my life. You have to tell me what's going on."
He holds my eyes for a long moment.
"This is about how your brother died. The version you were told isn't the whole story.
I've spent years building toward the point where I could act on it.
You being here is part of that. That's what I can tell you tonight.
The rest I'll tell you when I can. For now I'm asking you to stay. And to trust me."
He seems unused to asking. When in doubt, I'm going to say yes.
"Okay," I tell him.
He nods once. "Then we should eat."
I nod. I haven't eaten since the airport. The letter in my bag has waited eight years. It can wait one more hour.
***
We head down the stairs. Jaxson is still bent over the open hood, the welder at his rig.
Kane nods to them as we pass and walks me out the side door.
He doesn't ask if I want him to drive, just opens the passenger side of a black pickup parked behind the building and waits for me to get in.
The truck is older than I expected, the seats worn into a shape that fits him, with a folding knife in the cup holder.
He pulls out onto the road and drives the half mile back into town.
"You eat anything since Bozeman?" he asks.
"Coffee."
He nods. "There's a diner on Main if you want quieter. But Mama Lou's is more family. Anyone in town first meets her before me. She'll want to look at you."
"Mama Lou's, then," I tell him, because I'll take family over quiet today.
The Rusty Anchor is on Main Street, a low wood building with painted anchors on the windows. Kane parks across the street, gets out, comes around and opens my door before I have my hand on the handle. None of that fits any version of him my brother had written down.
"Thank you," I tell him.
He doesn't answer, but the corner of his mouth lifts. He waits while I step down.
Inside, the bar is half full of working men eating with their elbows on the tables and a hockey game playing low over the bar.
Behind the counter is a woman with a steel-gray braid down her back and a faded anchor tattoo on her left forearm.
She looks up when we walk in. Her eyes go from Kane to me and back to him, and whatever happens behind them I would pay money to read.
"Kane."
"Lou."
"Two for the back booth?"
"Yes."
That's the entire negotiation. She comes around the counter, walks us to a corner booth, hands us two menus that look older than I am, and stops at the table with her hands on her hips.
She smiles at me. "You must be Callie. I've been waiting for you to come through that door."
"How did you —"
"Mama Lou knows everything before it happens." Kane's voice from across the table. "Don't ask her how. She won't tell you."
Her eyes are kind. "Long drive, honey."
"It was."
"I bet it was. I hope you're hungry."
I smile. "I am."
"Eat first," she tells me. "Everything else after."
She walks away. Kane turns back to me, slow.
"What does she mean by 'everything else'?"
"I have no idea, but she likes you. She'll look after you while you're in town."
I laugh once before I can stop myself. He almost smiles. It doesn't get to his mouth, but it reaches the corners of his eyes, and that small softness on a man this closed off is not what I was prepared for.
We eat a bowl of beef stew that warms me from the throat down, with a piece of bread Kane tears in half and hands me without asking.
He drinks black coffee, eats little, and answers what I ask without asking much back.
By the time Mama Lou clears our plates the bar has half emptied and the hockey game has gone to commercials.
Mama Lou drops the check by Kane's elbow and turns to me. "How was the stew, sweetheart?"
"Best I've had in months."
"Then you've earned yourself a slice of my apple pie. It's on the house, darling, and don't even think about saying no to me."
I smile. "Thank you."
She leans down and lowers her voice. "Don't mind the quiet, sweet pea. He's a good one. Just thrown by you. He's not used to having a pretty girl sitting across his table."
She winks at me and I have no idea what to do with my face.
She straightens, gives Kane a brief look across the booth, and goes back behind the counter.
A slice of warm apple pie arrives a minute later with two forks. I eat half, and Kane takes two bites before pushing the rest to me. He doesn't say anything, just pays, stands, and waits for me at the door. He's not the most talkative man I've ever met, but his quiet isn't cold. It's reassuring.
Outside the light is starting to soften over the mountains. Kane unlocks my side first, then crosses around to his own. We climb in. He puts the key in the ignition but doesn't turn it.
"I have a guest room," he tells me. "It's yours for as long as this takes."
I look across the cab at him. The light catches half his face through the windshield.
"Thanks, but I didn't ask."
"You don't have to ask. Iron Vault rule."
I want to argue but I don't, because he's right. I came here knowing I would need somewhere to stay, and after the day I've had I'm too tired to be proud about it.
"Okay," I tell him, and he starts the truck without another word.
Eight years I have carried his name folded in my bag, and tonight I am going to sleep under his roof. Whatever this turns into, I am not going to pretend I am sorry to be here.