FOUR
Hollis
Have we been holding hands since I helped her off the beach?
Why am I worried if I let go, it’ll never happen again?
Hand holding has never been my thing but with Meredith, I don’t want it to end and it’s confusing the hell out of me. She isn’t even in the vicinity of my type. I can practically hear Redford’s voice in my ear, mocking me.
Not your type? Sure, because beautiful, strong, independent, funny artists with killer curves and a sensitive side you could talk to for hours are so unappealing.
Imaginary Redford may be right but it doesn’t make this right. I’m working the case. She’s a witness. A victim. A woman I could fall in love with in a matter of seconds if I let myself. Or even if I didn’t.
I can feel her heart sink when the remains of her family’s camp come into view.
A wave of guilt drowns every negative thought I’ve had about the lucky bastards who owned this island.
Or any of the land around this lake. I always resented the fact that my family have lived here for generations and I never had anything like this handed to me.
When the call about the fire came over the radio, I think I cracked a smile.
I’m hating myself for it now. Look at her.
Meredith doesn’t take this for granted, she’s devastated.
Every summer of her life, until the reality of adulthood took over, this was her home away from home. This was her fortress of solitude.
Gone. For what?
A purported criminal smuggling ring? Not even real criminals, just some idiots from the north country hiding their stolen goods until the heat dies down enough to sell them to pawn shops in towns no one’s ever heard of.
If the Staties don’t take them down, I’ll do it my damn self.
“I’m sorry, Meredith, I shouldn’t have let you come here.”
“No, I needed to see it for myself. In my head, I just kept picturing a little fire damage we could renovate over. I wouldn’t have believed it if I didn’t see it.”
“Maybe you can rebuild. I know it’s not the same, but you could update.”
She shakes her head, a tight smile that stretches my heart around my ribcage. “My dad’s been trying to for years. The permits alone… It’s just not possible. We couldn’t even have a bathroom.”
“Really? Where did you…”
“We used a hollowed out tree stump with leaves for toilet paper. I’m kidding,” she laughs, slapping my arm with her free hand, leaving it wrapped around my bicep.
I’m not mad at it. “We had an outhouse. Oh lovely, now you’re picturing me peeing.
Eww, or worse. Picture me in the shower instead.
Except there isn’t one out here so we’d wash up in the lake. ”
I couldn’t get that image out of my head if I wanted to, long before she brought it up.
The thought of her bathing, in a shower or a lake, it has my heartrate climbing into the stratosphere.
I’m trying not to picture it, especially at a moment like this, but she conjured the image and now I can’t unsee it.
Did Meredith Cushing encourage me to picture her in the shower, while wrapped around my arm?
Teenage me fantasized about this girl, back when I didn’t think she actually existed.
She was more of a what-if. She was a mermaid, she wasn’t real.
Now that she is, the version of her I fantasized about has nothing on the real thing.
“Okay, cowboy, that’s enough picturing me in the shower. You’re on the clock. The house could only stay because it was grampa’d in or whatever it’s called.”
“Does this mean you’ll have to move back into the in-law suite in Connecticut?”
“It’s fine, we make it work, it’s just a tiny loft with no bedrooms. Don’t go picturing me and Aspen sharing a bed.
Although we would if there was room for one.
We each have our own side of a sectional.
They built it for my grandmother but she said she’d rather keel over than be relegated to the garage like an old refrigerator that barely runs.
She said Dad wouldn’t be hanging calendars of half naked beer bimbos on her. ”
“I take it she got placed in a nursing facility?”
“Grandma? God no, she got my old bedroom. It worked out, the garage suite’s bigger and has a kitchen.
I do miss my old bathroom though, the vanity in there was big enough to sleep on.
It fit all my makeup, and believe me, I have a lot.
Before I got laid off, I swear half my paycheck went to every beauty store within a fifty mile radius. ”
“I hate to tell you but I think you wasted your money.”
Her hands leave my arm to shoot to her hourglass hips and I instantly miss her touch, somehow even more than I knew I would. The offended scoff that rolls off her pouty bottom lip has me dying to kiss her right here, right now.
“Meredith, seeing you like this, no makeup, no sleep, you are still the most beautiful woman I’ve ever laid eyes on. Honest opinion, makeup companies should be paying you to wear their product. You steal the show without it.”
Her hand slides up her stomach, exposing a sliver of the soft skin around her belly button.
I stare, unable to look away if my life depended on it, as her fingers slither closer to her chest, landing on her heart.
That pouty face she’s making has my eyes so split between what to focus on it’s making me dizzy.
“Hollis, I don’t know what to say. Which never happens so don’t go telling anyone, they wouldn’t believe you.
I kinda forgot today isn’t actually tomorrow, it’s still yesterday to me.
I can’t believe I’ve been walking around like this all day.
Oh god, the pimple on my cheek. That’s it, back to work, Officer.
No more ogling the homeless girl. Come on, I’ll show you where the root cellar is. ”
A red stain of embarrassment washes over her as she leads me uphill to the cabin. An undeniable urge nearly has me stopping her, just so I can find a way to prove how much I mean it. Something tells me she’ll never believe how perfect she is, inside and out.
Daintily, she ducks under the police tape I hold up for her, eyes glistening with the pain of a hundred funerals as she tries not to take in her surroundings. I can’t imagine the memories she sees smoldering in every corner, like photos of her childhood gone up in flames.
I’ve never been a man of many words but if I could find some to say right now, perhaps all the ones I haven’t said over the years, I would really love to utter at least a few of them. Maybe I’ve been saving them for this moment.
“You can’t really tell but the door’s right at our feet. If you lift that tile, you’ll find the handle.”
There goes my moment to say the things she’s probably needed to hear her whole life.
What makes me think I could find the words no one else was able to?
All I can do is watch them fade into the ether.
They’ll get trapped in the fog that rolls over the lake when night falls, and hopefully someday, they’ll find their way to Meredith’s ears.
The handle creaks and groans more than an old house should but it lifts, despite the structural damage, revealing a small room lined with shelves. I’ll be damned, he was telling the truth, they didn’t clear everything out.
“Is that a TV?” she asks, squatting to peer down the ladder. “And BluRays? I didn’t know people still used those. Is that one of those snoring machines? Hollis, what the hell is going on here? What is this stuff?”
“It’s a group of smalltime criminals doing what they can for money. B&Es mostly.”
“Mmhmm, sure,” she says with a nod, hands on her hips. “B&Es, 619s, CPKs.”
I can’t help but laugh at her ridiculousness, which is the perfect reason to avert my eyes from the mile of cleavage I’m getting from up here. If I stared slack jawed any longer, she’d eventually notice.
I jump to clarify. “Breaking and entering in the southern part of the state, wealthy neighborhoods, they hide it here. Come back a few months later when the heat’s died down and pawn the stuff.
Sounds like they panicked once they realized you were here, took the good stuff and left these things behind.
I’m guessing they set the fire to cover their tracks.
Our green faced friend didn’t come to until the fire was raging, he thought they’d come back for him. ”
“Okay, makes sense, but how the hell would they know about the root cellar? We spent every summer here and I swear we’d pull on every tile before finding the right one. We used to climb down there to tell ghost stories. They’d have to know the house was empty and which tile to use.”
“So you can see why I thought you might have been involved somehow.”
She grumbles incoherently, mimicking what I’m assuming is my voice while flapping her fingers, which I believe are meant to be my mouth.
How is it hilarious, adorable and sexy at the same time?
“I guess I can see how you might have sort of been right, but barely. It does seem like an inside job. Did I use it correctly?”
“Indeed you did. Can you think of anyone who would have that kind of information? Do you have any family members involved in shady stuff?”
“My brothers can do no wrong, even Richard the Great, despite his multiple love children. But he’s as straightlaced as my parents. So is Anthony, I’ve seen him try to give money back to the bottle return machine when it counted a can twice.”
I’m staring at her cleavage again. Why can’t I look away? It’s like a tractor beam pulling me in. “Doesn’t sound like they fit the bill.”
“My grandmother used to steal fruit from the grocery store. She’d shove oranges into her bra.
Then she moved on to cantaloupes. She got caught when she upped it to watermelons though.
My parents don’t let her shop anymore. I still try to avoid any fruit at the house.
My dad’s brother used to come here with us, Crazy Uncle Mike.
But he had gambling debts and ended up in prison, too many assaults.
Ya know, on judges and bail bondsmen, mall Santas, the usual. ”
“Hang on. Dipshit back at the station, he did time in Connecticut a few years ago. He let the name Mike slip. He covered his tracks by giving me the last name Hunt, and grabbing his balls in case I didn’t put two and two together.”
“Hollis, remember, math isn’t my best subject.
I know what two and two is but I’m not getting it.
Mike’s last name isn’t Hunt. I don’t know Mike Hunt.
Ohhh I get it. That’s why he grabbed his junk,” she laughs, sending her cleavage jiggling, which has my head bobbing right along with it.
“Umm, hello, officer, my eyes are up here. Those, kind sir, are my nipples.”
Shit. She called me on it and I still can’t look away. To be fair, I’m not staring at her nipples, I can’t see them from this angle. I’m lost in the never-ending line between her breasts and what my face could be doing there, among other parts of me.
I hate objectifying her but god damn, she has to be intentionally torturing me. I swear she’s pulling her shoulders together, squeezing her own cantaloupes and giving them a little shake.
Does she want me to look?
Oh dear god, why is she running her finger over the curvature of her chest while staring at me?
What have I done to deserve this kind of punishment?
And why do I want to spend the rest of my life kneeling at her altar, repenting for it?