Chapter 7 Kane #2
"I'm here to work, Mama Lou," Callie says, bright. "Put me wherever you need me."
"Apron's on the hook, sweet pea. Wash up. I have the apples peeled and the dough is resting."
Callie hangs her tote, washes her hands at the sink behind the counter, ties the apron over her shirt, and joins Lou in the prep area behind the bar.
Lou sets me in the booth with a mug of coffee, a plate of bacon and eggs, and a slice of freshly toasted bread.
From the booth I can see the whole prep area, and I take the chance to watch Callie move around it.
She's lit up by being out of the house and having a purpose, even if only for a few hours.
Lou is sweet with her, all honey, sweet pea, baby girl.
The questions come gentle and steady: studies, home, what she ate growing up, who taught her to bake, why psychology.
Callie answers it all: the small town in the midwest where she grew up, the university two states over, her grandmother's kitchen on Sunday afternoons, Danny home on leave between deployments.
None of it sounds sad in her telling. Just far away, and worth missing.
Lou keeps her hands in the dough and her eyes on Callie's face the whole time.
When the stretch about Danny ends she doesn't say a word, just lays a floury hand on Callie's wrist for a beat before turning back to the rolling.
Two hours go by. Callie crimps eight pies to Lou's four, and the trays go into the oven three at a time, the kitchen filling with apple, butter, pastry browning.
I sit in the booth with the mug Lou keeps refilling, watching the back of Callie's neck where her hair is up and the line of her shoulder under the apron strap.
I haven't taken my eyes off her since she tied the apron on.
A woman comes in around eleven with her kid in tow, takes the counter, and gets served. The boy stares at me until his mother tells him to mind. I'm used to it.
By noon two more walk in, then four after that. Lou shifts gears for the lunch rush, and Callie keeps making pies behind the bar without being told.
At one Lou comes over to my booth.
"Take her home, Kane. She did a day's work in three hours."
"All right."
"And Kane."
"Yeah."
"That girl's a treasure. You'd have to be blind not to see it." She laughs, low and warm. Then the laugh fades. "Be patient with her."
I look up to find the joke gone out of Lou's face.
"Yes, ma'am."
What I don't tell her is that I'm not blind. I see every inch of Callie, and that's exactly the problem.
I pay her over her protest. I leave a hundred under the saltshaker when she isn't looking.
Callie washes up and hangs the apron back on the hook. Lou wraps her in both arms and makes her promise to come back, while tucking a brown paper bag into her hand.
"Slice for the road. Eat it in the truck, sweet pea. Don't wait on him."
Callie laughs out loud, full and free, and the sound stops me. It's the first time I've heard her laugh from her belly since she walked into the garage. The first thing through my head is that I want to spend the rest of my life making her laugh this hard.
***
I drive the twelve miles back with the bag of pie in her lap, the heat of the cab around us, the laugh still in my ears.
She talks more on the drive back than on the drive in. About Lou's hands moving over the dough, about the rhythm of the kitchen, about the boy at the counter who asked her three times when the pies would be ready. There's real color in her voice.
"I haven't done something this useful with my hands in a long time," she says. "Not for anyone outside my own four walls."
She is glowing with it. I keep my eyes on the road and let her fill the cab.
A mile from the turn for the dirt road I pull onto the shoulder.
She looks at me.
"Three things I want to tell you before we get back."
"Okay."
"One. Lou's taken to you, and Lou doesn't take to many people. If you ever need a place to be that isn't my house, you go to Lou's. She'll keep you until I come get you."
"All right."
"Two. The Sunday is a standing thing if you want it. She'll have you back every week. You're out of the house, and I know you're safe."
"I want to keep coming."
"Good."
"And three?"
I take my eyes off the road and meet hers.
"Three is that there's a man named Colonel Thorne.
He was part of what happened to Danny. I haven't worked out yet whether he's a real threat to you or not, but until I know for sure I want you close, where I can keep an eye on you, where I can protect you.
I owe you the whole story. Not today, but I'm telling you now so you know it's coming. "
She's quiet for a long beat.
"Okay."
"I'm not going to put it off forever, Callie."
"I know."
"You're patient with me. I see it. I'm asking you for a little more of it, just for a while longer."
"You have it. Danny didn't trust easily, and he trusted you. The rest is in your eyes, and they haven't lied to me once."
My hands tighten on the wheel for the last mile of dirt road.
I pull into the gravel drive and kill the engine. She gets out before I can come around to her side, carries the bag of pie up the porch in front of me, kicks off her boots at the door, and disappears inside.
I stand out there a minute longer with her laugh still in my ears and the cold air in my lungs.
The line holds today. But it's getting harder to pretend the problem is only that I want her.
I like her. That's a different fight. And I'm not sure it's one I'll be able to win.