I feel the detective’s arms around me still, the reassurance and compassion, the warmth of his flesh. But now he stands feet away and I find myself staring at the floor.
His hand comes to my chin. He lifts my face, forces me to see him. “Mrs. Dennett,” he says, and then he starts again, knowing I’m not quite looking. I can’t. I’m too ashamed to see what’s in his eyes. “Eve.” I look and there’s no anger, no scorn. “There isn’t anything in the world that I’d rather do. It’s just that...under the circumstances...”
I nod. I know. “You’re an honorable man,” I say. “Or a good liar.”
He runs a hand along the top of my hair. I close my eyes and lean into his touch. I curl myself into him and let his arms fold around me. He holds me close. He presses his lips to the top of my head and kisses my hair, and then runs a hand down the length of it.
“No one makes me come see you two, three times a week. I do that. Because I want to see you. I could call. But I come to see you.”
We stand like that for a minute or so and then he says that he needs to head down to the courthouse in the city. I walk him to the door and watch him leave and then stand, in front of the cold glass, staring down the tree-lined street until I can no longer see his car.
Colin
Before
It’s called an Alberta clipper. It’s an area of fast-moving low pressure that happens when warm air from the Pacific Ocean collides with the mountains of British Columbia. It forms into something called a Chinook, strong hurricane-like winds, bringing arctic air south. I didn’t have a clue what they were two days ago. Not until the temperature in the cabin plunged so low we decided to blast the heat in the truck for a few minutes. We needed to thaw out. We pushed our way through the biting wind to the truck. She walked on my heels, used me for wind resistance. The doors were practically frozen shut. In the truck, I found a station on the radio and the weatherman was talking about this Alberta clipper. It had just arrived in the area. It was busy pummeling us with snow and plunging the wind chill into what I could only describe as unbearable. The temperature must have dropped by twenty degrees since morning.
I didn’t think the truck would start. I let out a few fuck-yous while she said a few Hail Marys, but in the end, something worked. It took a while for warm air to come out of the vent, and when it did, we blasted the heat and just sat. I don’t think she ever stopped shivering.
“How long have you had this truck?” she asks. She says my truck must be older than some of her students. The front speakers don’t work. The vinyl seat is torn.
“Too long,” I say. The weatherman breaks for commercial. I spin the dial on the radio, flipping from country music to Beethoven’s Für Elise. No chance in hell. I try again and find a classic rock station. I leave it there and turn the volume low. Outside, the wind shrieks. It pitches the truck back and forth. It must be going sixty miles an hour.
I have a cough and a runny nose. She told me it’s from walking around in the cold the other night, but I tell her you can’t get sick from being in the cold. And then I turn my head and cough. My eyes are tired. I feel like shit.
We watch, out the window. The trees lurch back and forth in the wind. A branch snaps off a nearby oak and hits the truck. She jumps and looks at me. I say, “It’s okay.” It will be over soon.
She asks me what my plan is, how long I intend for us to hide out in this cabin. I tell her that I don’t know. “There are some things I need to figure out,” I say, “before we can go,” well aware that when I go, she’s coming with me. It’s all I can think about these days: when and where we’re going. The dropping temperatures make clear that we can no longer stay here. I’ve got Dan working on phony passports, but he said it would take time. How much? I asked, from the payphone outside Hardware Sam, making sure he knew we didn’t have much time. Call me in a couple weeks, he said. I’ll see what I can do.
So for now we wait. But I don’t tell her that. For now I let her think I don’t have a clue.
The Beatles come on the radio. She says that they remind her of her mom. “She used to listen to their records when Grace and I were kids,” she says. “She liked the music, but more than anything, it was a link to her English heritage. She cherished all things English—tea and Shakespeare and the Beatles.”
“Why don’t you ever talk about your mom?” I ask.
She says she’s sure she’s mentioned her. “But I probably only mentioned her in passing. That’s the way my mother is,” she tells me. “Never in the spotlight. There’s just never anything to say. She’s quiet, submissive. Malleable.”
My hands hover before the vent, trying to absorb as much heat as I can. “What does she think happened to you?” I ask.
I can smell the way our soap clings to her skin like it never does mine. A subtle smell. Like apples.
“I don’t know,” she says. “I haven’t thought about it.”
“But she knows you’re gone.”
“Maybe.”
“And she’s worried.”