Cassidy Kincaid Mysteries Box Set

by Amy Waeschle

  Being a newcomer to this mountain, she descended a groomer first, feeling the warmth of the work spread through her body. She felt Pete everywhere, and once thought she heard his voice calling from the lift passing above her. At the transition to a steeper section her edge caught, and she went sprawling, landing hard on her side before sliding several meters down the slope. After catching her breath, she lay on her back for a long moment, blinking at the overcast sky.

  “Are you okay?” a voice called from somewhere above. Moments later, a woman skidded to a stop next to her.

  Cassidy met her concerned gaze. Could the woman see that she was dark and broken and sad inside? Or did she just look like any other skier who had taken a tumble? “Yeah,” she said, rolling her side and tucking in her skis. “Thanks.”

  Continuing down the slope, Cassidy thought back to her recent sessions with Jay. After holding out for many weeks, she had finally told him about her unexpected feelings for Mark. She should have known by then that Jay wouldn’t judge her—he was never like that—but describing her desire that night was the scariest thing she had ever done. But Jay seemed to know what to say and just how to say it in order for her to feel safe. He had helped her see that her feelings were a natural by-product of her vulnerability and craving for affection. Jay had hinted that this could be a pattern for her and that discussing her feelings about the loss of her parents might be useful. But she couldn’t go there. Not yet.

  After trying out a few more descents, Cassidy finally found a perfectly steep run humped with shallow moguls. A tingle of apprehension traveled over her skin. In her mind, she watched Pete ski by her and disappear over the crest of the slope. She closed her eyes and savored the image. I miss you so much, she thought as a deep ache throbbed inside her. Pete’s presence faded, and she opened her eyes to the broad slope and sounds of skiers whooshing by. She wiped her eyes and inhaled a full breath of the mountain air, and then dropped into the run.

  By one o’clock, her legs felt tired and her heart heavy, but there was something else, too. Not happiness exactly, but a feeling of lightness, as if there was a little more space in the sky.

  She walked to her truck, wondering how it would feel if she were with a group, or a girlfriend. Before Pete’s passing, she hadn’t made time to nurture new friendships in the department, and after her breakdown, she was too ashamed to try. She remembered the exchange she and Jay had shared about it:

  “It’s easy to feel embarrassed after what happened. There was a lot going on for you that day, and then all of a sudden you were in the spotlight. But I would bet that those people there care about you and want you to get better,” he said.

  The term “get better” had knocked around in her head, and it wasn’t pleasant. Did it mean that she was sick? “I’m afraid of what they think of me,” Cassidy replied. “I don’t want them to feel sorry for me, or think I’m unable to do my job.”

  “That’s fair. But what if things were switched around, and one of them was going through a rough time in his life and didn’t tell you about it?”

  “I’d be worried. We’re kind of a team.”

  “Do you see what that does?” Jay asked. He waited, his expression calm and patient.

  Cassidy blinked. “Yeah,” she said as a sensation of lightness passed through her. “I think I do.”

  Twenty-Four

  Eugene, Oregon

  February 7, 2016

  “So what do you and Jay talk about?” Quinn asked as they settled in at her kitchen table. After picking him up at the small Eugene airport earlier that afternoon, she led him on a tour of campus and showed him her office before returning home to cook dinner.

  “Um,” Cassidy said, swallowing a bite of pasta. “Everything, I guess.”

  Quinn sipped from his glass of wine.

  “At first, I just cried a lot, and he just . . . let me. It sounds weird but it was all I could do at the time. He was worried about me, I think.”

  “Why?” Quinn said, stabbing a bite of salad. “I mean, besides the obvious.”

  Cassidy inhaled a deep breath. “I was drinking a lot,” she said.

  “Who wouldn’t?” Quinn asked.

  She drank a long sip from her water glass, savoring the coolness on her throat. She hadn’t given up beer but was trying to be more aware of why she drank it. Unfortunately, there are no shortcuts, Jay had told her. The only way through this is through it.

  She sighed a shaky breath. “But mostly Jay just listens. Sometimes he asks questions that challenge me. Sometimes I get angry, or just cry.”

  “What kind of questions?”

  Cassidy paused. “I guess I’m hard on myself, so he tries to get me to see when I’m doing it.”

  Hours later, after they washed and dried the dishes, Quinn steadied her with a look. “Ready to do this?” he asked.

  Cassidy ran a hand through her long hair and pictured the piles of Pete’s things in her garage waiting for them. “No,” she said.

  After her solo ski trip, she had returned home to find everything just as she had left it, with Pete’s spare razor resting on the sink, his laptop waiting on the edge of the kitchen table, his books still crowding her bookshelves. Something had snapped in her, and though she had been exhausted from the drive, a surge of energy had taken over. The next thing she knew she had moved all of his things into the garage. Waking the next morning to have all trace of him vanished sent her into a tailspin. Jay had helped her work through it, but the idea of having to go through all of his things again and sort them was too much. Thankfully, Quinn, who had planned a visit for her birthday, had jumped at the chance to help. “Kind of a shitty birthday present, though,” he had said. “Maybe we should go to Hawaii instead.” But she knew that putting off the task would only prolong its hold on her.

  “Do you remember when Pamela went through all of Dad’s things without us after he died?” Quinn asked.

  “Yeah,” Cassidy said. “At least I got to keep his desk, and I still have his World War Two books.”

  “I got his watch, but only after I reclaimed it from the pile she had set aside for Reeve.”

  “I didn’t know you stole it.”

  “Stole it? No way was I going to let her give it to him. He would have hawked it in a flash. This is Swiss precision, here,” he said, flashing the silver timepiece on his wrist. “They don’t make them like this anymore.”

  They shared a moment in silence. Cassidy recalled Reeve’s visit. “Is he in jail again?” Cassidy asked.

  “I think so. I’m sure that getting hauled off your property violated his parole.”

  Cassidy knew she was stalling, and sighed to combat her rising sense of dread.

  Quinn stepped close and wrapped his arm around her shoulders. Her body went very quiet. Being physically close to anyone still felt strange. She remembered her craving for Mark at the memorial and wondered if the sensation would always linger. Even though she felt less ashamed of it now, it was still so hard to make sense of everything that was going on inside her.

  “C’mon,” Quinn said.

  Reluctantly, Cassidy followed him to the coat hook by the back door where they zipped into down jackets and wool hats before stepping into the garage.

  Inside the space, the chilled air tasted of mildew and motor oil. Foil-wrapped insulation panels wove through the studs against the wall bordering the house, contrasting with the other two bare plywood walls. Pete’s Jetta took up two-thirds of the space. His things filled the remaining floor area.

  Quinn had labeled the four boxes he had foraged from the appliance store in town: KEEP, DONATE, GOODWILL, FRIENDS. Cassidy felt a heaviness shift inside her, as if her body was filling with water that sloshed and pulled her down as she moved.

  Quinn sighed forcefully next to her. “Where should we start?”

  The words stuck like mud in her brain, and she managed to produce only a low, shallow puff of air. Cassidy wiped her eyes, her gaze sweeping over the items in the middle of the floor
: the drawers of Pete’s dresser, stacked on top of each other like Jenga blocks, his bike against the wall and his tool kit, ski gear, a soccer ball, a pile of shoes, a framed book poster signed by the author, stacks and stacks of books, an unpacked box of his winter clothes, a mound of kitchen items.

  “What are you going to do about his car?” Quinn asked.

  Pete had no attachment to cars the way some people did. He bought it for $1000 bucks, put a roof rack on it and chains in the trunk and called it good. But still, many memories of their time together were tied to that car.

  “There are non-profits that take donations. Want me to find out?” Quinn said.

  Cassidy gave him a look of gratitude. “Would you?”

  “You bet,” he said with a nod. He stepped forward and nudged the pile of shoes with his toe. “I had no idea Pete had such a thing for shoes. Did he ever throw his old ones out?”

  Cassidy smiled, but her lips quickly tightened in a grimace as a wave of sadness overtook her. “He said his old running shoes all had stories to tell. He thought of them as friends.”

  “I get that, though I don’t keep my old shoes around. They only last me a few months, anyways.”

  “That’s because you run a hundred miles a week.”

  He gave her a look, then returned his attention to the shoes. “So, would it be safe to say you don’t need these? Moving them out would certainly improve the air quality in here.”

  Cassidy took a deep breath. “Yeah,” she said.

  Quinn picked up a pile of the shoes and placed them in the DONATE box.

  Cassidy selected a pair, her breath fast and high in her chest as a memory played in her mind of Pete lounging in the grass outside their house after a long run.

  “C’mon, Cass,” Quinn said, giving her a compassionate but stern look. “We can do this.”

  Cassidy took a deep breath, then let the shoes drop into the box.

  “You got rid of the pots and pans?” Quinn asked some time later, his tone incredulous. They had dealt with his knickknacks, ski gear, and the clothes from his closet—things that were easy to part with because he rarely wore the dress shirts, ties, and slacks. Plus they weren’t a part of the Pete she knew, who preferred jeans and T-shirts and fleece, or soccer warm-up pants. When they began sorting the books, she broke down, and Quinn sat and held her for a long time. Pete had loved books and learning so much. Parting with his collection of the nonfiction he devoured and so eagerly shared with her felt like a betrayal. Shouldn’t she reread these favorites as a tribute? But the thought had overwhelmed her, and the tears and anger poured out. She hadn’t planned to drink, but Quinn cracked a beer for her, and she didn’t have the strength to resist.

  She sighed. “Every time I look at that orange one, I picture him cooking his spaghetti sauce.”

  Quinn picked up the cast iron saucepan. “These are nice, though.”

  “I know.”

  Quinn sighed, and turned. “I think he would want you to keep them. He loved cooking for people. Do you really want a stranger to have these?”

  Cassidy hugged herself and tried to sift through her emotions.

  “Your call,” Quinn said.

  “Okay, maybe I’ll keep them, but not in the house, not yet.”

  Quinn moved the set of three orange saucepans to a bare spot on the floor.

  They went through the other kitchen items, most of which she wanted to give away. “We’re going to need to go shopping,” Quinn said. “You don’t have any utensils now. Or coffee cups.” He raised an eyebrow.

  “I have a few, and I’m keeping his knives,” Cassidy said. Her shoulders slumped as she realized that Quinn was right about the shopping. But removing most of his gadgets and even the basic things like silverware and mugs felt like a significant step towards reclaiming her kitchen.

  “I think a gas barbeque should be high on your list of future purchases,” Quinn said from across the garage.

  “Hmm,” she said, wondering if this would help. She knew she couldn’t survive on peanut butter toast and cheese and crackers forever. “I don’t know how to use one,” she said.

  “Piece of cake,” Quinn said. “We’ll get you one of those self-lighting ones. You can cook a burger or chicken in, like, minutes.”

  Cassidy imagined herself in an apron, flipping a single burger.

  Quinn picked up a bread pan.

  “Keep that,” Cassidy cried out as a throb of pain shot through her. “Pete loved to bake bread,” she explained to Quinn’s concerned look. She wrapped her arms around herself as the memories flooded in. “I can’t give that away.”

  Quinn put the bread pan down and pulled her close. “I’m sorry,” he said into her hair.

  Cassidy leaned into his shoulder and let the tears fall.

  The following day Quinn cooked her a perfect omelet for breakfast. Her head felt heavy though whether from all of the crying or the beer she wasn’t sure. They had managed to go through everything except moving Pete’s car. She had been too wrung out the previous night to do it, knowing that his car would be filled with powerful memories. She had kept his favorite cookbooks, several of his most beloved books, the photo from his nightstand of the two of them, his bike tools, and a few articles of his clothing besides his favorite fisherman’s sweater: his retro-style blue down vest, the broken-in Levis, a few T-shirts, and his forest green puffball coat with the patches on the shoulders.

  They had pulled open a box containing files of his published stories. She reread the immigration series from Greece with tears streaming down her cheeks. There was also the story about the umbrella girls. She remembered how he’d wanted to go back to Sicily and dig deeper, but his editor hadn’t been able to swing the budget for a piece with so little corroboration, so the final product ended up as a shell of the story he wanted to write. The collection wasn’t complete, though—his illegal fish farm bust and the coal power plant story were missing. Cassidy realized there were likely other missing stories—ones she hadn’t read because she was either too focused on her own writing, or traveling when they were released. Most of his many online stories were missing. Maybe printing them out for his files hadn’t occurred to him, or he’d just never gotten around to it.

  After thinking long and hard about it, the box of Pete’s work had been set aside for recycling. Was she really going to read all those old stories again? Quinn reminded her that everything was online.

  “He was so talented,” she said to Quinn as they sipped their coffee. A story about a family of Syrian immigrants trying to survive in San Francisco lay next to her plate.

  “He really was,” Quinn agreed.

  “What’s happening with the book, by the way?” Quinn asked.

  Cassidy sighed. “It comes out in April.”

  “Are they doing a release party or anything like that?”

  The cup shook in her hands. “I’m not sure,” she said, her voice cracking.

  Quinn looked down at his coffee.

  “I’m not sure what they do in . . . situations like this,” she finished with difficulty. She wiped her eyes.

  Quinn exhaled a deep, blubbering breath.

  Cassidy reached across the table for his hand, and their eyes met. “Shit, this sucks,” he said. “I mean, I’m miserable—I loved him, too, but you—” He broke off, grimacing, and blinked up at the ceiling.

  Cassidy squeezed his hand, her eyes blurring.

  Quinn wiped his eyes with his sleeve and cleared his throat. “What about this?” he asked, nodding at the black laptop on the counter nearby.

  “I don’t know,” Cassidy said. “His whole life is on there.”

  “Yeah,” he said. “His pictures, address book, passwords.”

  “His research . . . ”

  They stared at the device in silence for a moment.

  “I could clean everything off of there, and you could donate it,” Quinn said. “Maybe a local school would want it or something.”

  Cassidy nodded, liking the i
dea of his computer being used that way. Her thoughts turned to Pete’s pictures, most of which she didn’t have copies of. Were there other things on his laptop that she would want to keep? “Maybe we could copy some of his stuff to a thumb drive.”

  “Sure,” Quinn said. “I could do that.”

  “Can you put his pictures on my computer?” she asked as a fresh wave of tears sprang from her eyes. “Maybe in a special file somewhere, for when I’m ready to go through them?”

  Quinn nodded, his lips tight in a grimace. “What about his twitter account, his email, have you dealt with those?”

  Cassidy looked away, feeling the tug of overwhelm drag her down. “No,” she said.

  “C’mon, we’ll tackle it together.”

  Twenty-Five

  Roosevelt High School auditorium, Seattle

  April 13, 2017

  Awash in emotion, Cassidy hugged Emily tight when she entered the auditorium. As the strangers attending the book launch event filed in, she held it together, but seeing a familiar face tore away her protective shield and the tears built up behind her eyes.

  “Thank you for coming,” Cassidy said as she released her friend. She wiped her eyes with a tissue stashed in her pants pocket.

  “Do you think I’d miss it?” Emily scrutinized Cassidy with a long look. “Are you sure you’re ready for this?” she asked in a quiet voice.

  Cassidy inhaled a deep breath. “No,” she said. Cassidy had finally worked up the nerve to call University of California Press to ask about planning a book release party in Seattle. The book’s editor had already set up events at a few bookstores in the area, with similar setups in Portland, San Francisco, Boise, and Bozeman, Montana. They were thrilled with her interest and offered their full support.

  The first copy of Pete’s book arrived two weeks prior. Cassidy smoothed the bright blue cover with the image of a giant wave in the background and let the tears fall. She read the back, amazed at the flashy blurb, the enthusiastic testimonials by people whose names she recognized: Laird Hamilton, Lindsey Vonn, and editors from magazines like Men’s Health, Outside, and Climbing. The inside flap continued with an outpouring of supportive phrases from more athletes and media, and her fingers turned the pages slowly, reverently, savoring this moment the way Pete would have. She turned to the opening pages and her heart stopped when she read: