Page 79 of The Whisper Place
Max had just come back from lunch with Nicole Short, the HR director at ACT. Their hiring freeze was over, which meanta flood of new candidate screening business, and apparently she also favored Max taking another bullet. Considering his history, it probably felt like a safe bet.
The front door opened. Bracing my side, I left the back room and saw Kate Campbell standing in the doorway. The sun sliced her in two, half inside, half out. Her emotions were in a tightly controlled war over whether to take another step.
“Hi.” I stopped behind my desk, giving her plenty of space. “Max, we’ve got company.”
We hadn’t seen Kate Campbell since we dropped her and her mother off at a hospital in Illinois a few weeks ago. Valerie sent us text updates and we’d gotten a few pictures from Charlie, but I wasn’t expecting to cross paths again until the case went to trial.
Ted Kramer was being held without bail on charges of murder and attempted murder. Theo, who the police picked up as soon as he’d fled the woods, had been charged with kidnapping, aiding and abetting, and attempted murder. The trial dates weren’t set yet, but the story of a father and son’s torture of a mother and daughter had been front-page news as soon as it hit the wire and public attention showed no signs of waning.
Kate looked a lot different than she had that day in the hospital. The dirt and blood and tattered clothing were gone, replaced by clean skin, a few gauze bandages, and a sundress, but there were still dark shadows under her eyes and a knee-jerk anxiety as she surveyed our office. She was surprised by the number of plants and the style of the quirky orange chairs in the front, and guessed—correctly—that one of our wives must have decorated. Shelley had just reupholstered those chairs.
Max came out, stopping short when he realized who it was.
“It’s a little stuffy in here,” I told him. “Why don’t you prop open the back door?”
I did the same with the front, moving slowly to give Kate enough time to decide whether she was coming in or going out. She came in and hovered near the window.
When Max reappeared, he offered her a beer.
“No thanks,” she said, but the breeze drifting through the building calmed her and after another hesitation she sat on the edge of the chair closest to the door.
“It’s good to see you,” Max offered. “How are you doing?”
She shrugged and shook her head, a cocktail of tangled emotions rising at the question. “Better, I think. But some days are worse. I don’t know. I think that’s the price, sometimes. That doesn’t make sense.”
“It does.” It made perfect sense. I felt it this morning, at the breakfast table with Eve and Earl. Earl and I worked on the Sudoku while Eve checked readouts and weather patterns and told us where the sevens went. It was better, so much better, than the decades I’d spent starting every day alone. But having them meant I could lose them. The brighter the sun, the darker the shadows it cast.
“I’m glad you stopped by. I was going to bring this by the bakery.” Max pulled a manila envelope out of his desk and walked it over to Kate. She looked inside, confused, and then a genuine smile bloomed on her face.
“I wondered where it was.” She pulled out the dough cutter, flipping it in her hand and examining it. “I don’t think I need it anymore, but I still want it.” She slid it into a pocket of her sundress. “Thank you.”
“You could thank us better with pastries.” Max smoothed out the envelope and put it back with the supplies. “Maybe some of that cinnamon bread Blake had that one night?”
“You really are a cop, aren’t you?”
“Former,” Max corrected.
She nodded and her energy shifted, became more serious. “I’m learning that some cops—and former cops—are all right.” Then she turned to me. Another shift. This one was even more painful, treading into the darkness, unearthing fresh traumas.
“I—this is going to sound unhinged—” She glanced nervously out the window.
Max laughed and took a swig of beer. “That’s his entire identity.”
“I saw you, when I was trapped. In a dream, maybe, or a hallucination. There was a prophet caught in a storm. It was a story that Ted—but it doesn’t matter what he said. Sometimes the prophet was me. Other times it looked just like you.” The room had gone completely quiet, the only noise drifting in from the open doors, the distant traffic heading home for the day. “Mom told me that you’re a psychic, that you dreamed about me.”
My throat had gone completely dry. “I did.”
“I dreamed about you, too.” She stood up and smiled awkwardly, turning to escape back into the sun. “I’ll bring you guys some cinnamon bread next time.”
She hesitated, glancing at me. “Watch out for storms.”
Kate
The fire burned bright, all oranges and licking yellows against the star-crusted horizon. Charlie, Blake, and I sat around the fire pit in Charlie’s backyard, beers sweating on the arms of our chairs. Blake and Charlie were arguing about something. It had started with Molly Ringwald, I think, and drifted from there. Their voices wove around the fire, flickering with the same heat and light.
A large tent with only screens for sides sat a dozen yards away, halfway between the fire pit and the house. Charlie had put it up and we slept there on the nights I couldn’t be inside. I still woke up in a panic, even with the songs of crickets and frogs around me, even with the sleeping weight of Charlie’s arm draped protectively over my side. I ran out of the tent some nights and straight into the field. Other nights I paced the perimeter of the yard with a flashlight and a knife. If we were inside, I turned every light on in the house. Sometimes I could go back to sleep, but even if I didn’t I still returned to the warm place next to Charlie, snuggled my head into his chest, and felt the rumble of his snore. If he woke up, he’d pull me closer and kiss my hair, and then I relaxed enough to whisperthings I couldn’t yet say in the daylight. He always listened and, by not trying to make it better, he made it better.
Blake chucked another log on the fire, smirking when Charlie got up to arrange them in some predetermined formation. Eventually she’d start throwing smaller sticks and handfuls of leaves. It was part of their routine, and the comfort of knowing we would do this again next week—Blake coming here for our movie nights, popping a massive batch of popcorn, and all of us ending the night under the stars—was enough to put a lump in my throat. I was home. This place. These people. This was where I belonged.
