Still Water

by Amy Stuart

  “We did.”

  “My memory’s a little spotty. Until a few days ago, it’s spotty.”

  “You weren’t yourself,” Malcolm says.

  “Myself? I’m not sure you know—”

  “You’d been shot and you were on heavy medication,” Malcolm says. “You slept a lot. I weaned back the pills and I imagine that’s when things got clearer. There isn’t much to remember.”

  Clare feels her teeth clench in anger. “What were you doing the entire time we were at that motel?”

  “Tending to you.”

  Tending to you. Clare remembers driving straight to that motel after the last case ended, Malcolm securing supplies to clean her gunshot wound before springing her from the Blackmore hospital to avoid any scrutiny as the media circled, as the police arrived to take credit for the work Clare had done. She remembers her motel room, the beach down the path from the parking lot, the small grocery store up the road that Clare would walk to once her strength began to return. She remembers hour after hour of television, Malcolm changing her bandages, supplying her pills right on schedule. But what bothers her, Clare realizes now, are the long stretches when Malcolm was gone. When she was alone. What bothers her are the muffled phone calls she could hear through the wall that separated their rooms, the urgency in his voice. What bothers her is the notion that Malcolm is using the gaps in her memory to omit, to keep his own secrets secure. Secrets about his past, about his own wife gone missing, secrets he’s so far refused to share with Clare.

  “You must have been doing other things too,” Clare says.

  “I was lying low. Tying up loose ends. Waiting for the right case to come up.”

  “Right,” Clare says. “Sure.”

  “How is the shoulder, anyway?” Malcolm asks.

  “It hurts. I have one pill left.”

  “You shouldn’t need them anymore. The pain should be receding by now. Maybe it’s infected.”

  “It’s not infected. It just hurts. The pills help.”

  “You were out of sorts for a while there, Clare. It’s better if—”

  “Do I seem out of sorts to you now?”

  “No. But we agreed, Clare. You promised.”

  Agreed on what? Clare wants to shout. She presses her clamped fists between her knees. Promised what?

  The couple now sits on a bench adjacent to them, the woman’s head bent to rest on the man’s shoulder. For years Clare has taken note of this sort of happy coupledom in her midst with both awe and resentment. The way her brother, Christopher, poured his wife’s morning coffee as soon as he heard her descending the stairs. The gentle ribbing between Grace and her husband at the dinner table or in the car, even the barbs a form of endearment. That easy devotion was entirely foreign to Clare. Malcolm folds Clare’s note and tucks it into his back pocket.

  “You really know what you’re doing this time,” he says. “You’re on it.”

  “Please don’t do that.”

  “Do what?”

  “Condescend. ‘Good job, kid.’ You know I can get those pills anywhere, right? I don’t need to get them from you.”

  “You would do that?”

  Clare doesn’t answer. On the far side of the pond, a father chases his squealing toddler as she veers close to the pond’s edge. She sees Jason even in him, a doting father. Even in the men nothing like him.

  “Have you heard from him?” Clare asks.

  “From your husband?” Malcolm sighs. “No. He’s dropped all contact. I told you that. After I e-mailed him to say I’d had no luck finding you, that I was returning his fee. That was it. I’ve heard nothing since Blackmore.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “Why would I lie to you?”

  Because you refuse to tell me the truth about your life, Clare thinks. But she says nothing.

  “He’s not here,” Malcolm says.

  “I keep thinking I see him. Everywhere. I see him everywhere.”

  “The mind can play tricks,” Malcolm says.

  “It’s more than that. It’s more . . . like a sense. I can sense him. Getting closer, or something. Approaching.”

  “Listen,” Malcolm says. “There’s no way for him to know where you are. You’re a thousand miles from the last place he knew you to be.”

  “He hired you,” Clare says, shrugging. “He could have hired someone else too.”

  “I doubt that.”

  How clearly Clare can picture Rourke across from her at that steel table, the badge on a lanyard around his neck. How far will he dig? A dog approaches the bench, sniffing at their feet. Malcolm reaches out with an open palm, allowing the dog to pick up his scent before the owner arrives to retrieve it. Can Malcolm see the tremor in her hands? Has it worsened since she sat down?

  “Where are you staying?” Clare asks.

  “Here,” he says. “In the city. I’ve got some other things I’m looking into.”

  “Like what?”

  “I can’t discuss them.”

  “Anything to do with your wife?”

  “Clare.”

  “What? Don’t you think it’s time you told me?”

  “Told you what?”

  “Let me think,” Clare says, raspy. “Who you are. What you want. Why you’re protecting me. You name it. I could go on.”

  “I’ve told you everything you need to know.”

  “So I’m working this case alone,” Clare says.

  “You were alone last time too, weren’t you? We agreed you’re better off that way.”

  The words sting Clare. The phone in Malcolm’s pocket beeps. He takes it out and holds it on his lap until it beeps again. She watches Malcolm closely as he lifts the phone to read the message, resisting the urge to snatch the phone and read it herself. His eyes dart across the screen.

  “Listen.” Malcolm tucks his phone back into his pocket. “I have to go.”

  “I want more than half the money this time. You get a cut, but not half. You get twenty percent.”

  “That’s fair,” Malcolm says. He stands and steps to the edge of the pond, his back to her, his mind so clearly elsewhere. “Anything else?”

  “One other thing,” Clare says. “Don’t call him my husband.”

  “Sorry?” Malcolm pulls out his phone again and clutches it in his hand.

  “Don’t refer to Jason O’Callaghan as my husband. That’s what you called him. He’s not my husband anymore. I’m not his wife.”

  It feels impossible to interpret the look Malcolm gives her, the steadiness of it. He mouths the word okay. To Clare’s relief, a family cuts through the path between them, breaking the gaze. Malcolm’s phone beeps again.

  “I really have to go,” he says. “I imagine you’ll keep in touch.”

  Clare shrugs, her jaw tight. The couple watches Malcolm as he walks away, perhaps trying to appraise what his relationship to Clare might be. What is different about Malcolm’s gait? Then it comes to her: he’s not carrying his briefcase. By the time he reaches the far side of the pond, Clare can see his face in profile. He pulls his phone out again. That frown. Clare remembers it. She remembers the frown. The slam of a car door, lifting herself carefully from her motel bed. She remembers parting the curtains to see Malcolm standing shirtless next to his sedan, frowning down at his phone just as he does now, some kind of package tucked under his arm. The motel sign behind him flashed: VACANCY. It must have been dawn.

  Now, when she closes her eyes she can see him as he was, standing there shirtless in gym shorts, his hair messy with sleep, his body lean. I really have to go, he had said, just as he did now. In watching him then through the curtains of her motel room, in watching him walk away now, she feels an intense stab. Not of longing, not of kinship or hope or fear. Not even of anger. It is something else almost indiscernible. Grief.

  I needed some air.

  This was the line Clare always offered Jason upon returning from a run, even on November nights frigid with rain, her cheeks stung crimson as she p
eeled off her layers in their front hall. Jason always asked where she’d gone but never questioned this response, never even looked up from the television, never noticed her run growing longer and deeper into the evening. But after the death of her unborn son in September, all Clare could do was run morning and night, figuring her resolve to escape would grow stronger as her body did. Now she sits across from Jordan Haines in his office, the large desk between them, offering him the same answer to the same question.

  “I needed some air,” Clare says.

  “Pretty warm out for a walk,” Jordan says. “Did you get far?”

  “Sentinel Park,” Clare says. “Lapped it, then headed back here. Too hot for me. Where’s Ginny?”

  “Her class just ended. She’ll be here in a few minutes. We’ll hit the road before traffic snarls us up. How did it go with the detectives?”

  “Straightforward,” Clare says. “Obvious questions.”

  “I have a lot of questions for you too,” Jordan says.

  And I you, Clare thinks. “Maybe give me a breather,” she says. “I might be questioned out for the morning.”

  Jordan angles his head to study Clare. He wears a full suit and tie, his dark hair clean cut with just enough curl left on top. The resemblance to Markus is striking, as if Jordan were a photograph of his older brother in better days, his suit tailored to his lean build, versus the washed-out T-shirt and stained jeans Markus wore at the bunker. Clare looks around to shake his stare. The wall of glass behind her faces a converted loft space, windows to the street stretching ceiling to floor. A fishbowl.

  “Used to be a garment factory,” Jordan says. “We converted it into an office a few years ago.”

  “It’s a beautiful space. Quiet for a Monday.”

  “The August holiday,” Jordan says. “Easier to just shut down and give everyone the same two weeks off.”

  “And you don’t take a break?”

  “There’s no holiday from the work I do.”

  Something in his tone irks Clare, a smugness, his expression solemn in anticipating her next question.

  “Helen told me that you do a lot of pro bono work with shelters,” Clare says, taking the bait.

  “I do.” He points to a framed set of building plans hanging on the wall closest to his desk. MARGARET HAINES HOUSE, it reads across the bottom. “We acquired the empty lot next door to this building last year. We’ve been raising funds to build the city’s biggest and newest shelter. I don’t even think of it as a shelter. It’s a place for next steps. A launching pad. To help women in a real way. Give them real options.”

  “Like what Helen does.”

  “Right,” Jordan says, his smile tight. “Except Helen can only take in a few women at a time. This shelter would have dozens of rooms.”

  “Helen said yesterday that the land might be taken to build a highway to a new subdivision. What’s the word for that again?”

  “Expropriation,” Jordan says. “I don’t think it’ll get that far. We’ve been negotiating with the right levels of government. With the developer. I think Helen will just sell it.”

  “You don’t have a say in whether it gets sold?” Clare asks.

  He leans into the desk, considering the question. “I was ready to let that place go a decade ago. My life is here now. Downtown. My focus is on the shelter we’re trying to build here. I think Helen is ready to move on too. But Markus and Rebecca are rooted there. Markus has this grand notion of turning the fields organic. They have this whole vision. An urban farm. Closest one to the city. They’re big into wellness stuff.” He shakes his head. “Obviously an expressway isn’t part of that vision. And Helen . . . She wants Markus to be happy too. I think it’s hard for her to let go. I keep telling her she’ll have a big role here. Any role she wants. Out there she just doesn’t have the resources we’ll have—”

  “Who’s we?” Clare asks.

  “Philip Twining and me,” Jordan says. “He’s my partner. Not really a partner. I’m taking over the practice. He’s on the exceptionally long road to retirement.”

  “Why do I know that name?” Clare asks, playing along.

  “Maybe Helen’s mentioned him. He and his wife, Janice, took us in after our parents died. I was a baby. They raised me, pretty much.” Jordan pauses. “You’re not from near here?”

  “No.”

  “Right. Of course you aren’t. Sally wasn’t. I’m sorry.”

  “It’s fine,” Clare says.

  “I just asked because Janice and Philip were both very big on the civil rights scene. Then women’s rights. Philip has this knack for taking up the cause of the day and making his way to the front lines.”

  Clare must fix her expression to mask her annoyance, the tension she feels at his words. “The cause of the day?” she repeats.

  “Not like that,” Jordan says, catching her tone. “He genuinely cares. He and Janice both. They instilled that in me. The desire to help. The desire to be on the ground as change takes hold—”

  “They clearly instilled it in Helen too.”

  Jordan’s body language is quiet, the way he pinches the edge of the desk to adjust his posture or sets his hand to the back of his neck. He is used to eyes on him. Modesty does not come easily to him, Clare sees. It takes effort to keep his vanity in check.

  “Listen,” he says, face somber again. “I’m sorry about what I said last night.”

  “What did you say?”

  “About the comings and goings. About Sally. Implying I barely knew her. I mean I didn’t know her well. But I’m doing whatever I can to help with the search efforts. I know this must be hard for you.”

  “I haven’t slept much since I got here,” Clare says, the truth. “I was in the kitchen last night getting some water. Middle of the night. I saw you outside with Raylene. I guess you couldn’t sleep either.”

  If there’s a shift in his expression, Clare doesn’t catch it.

  “I stay over sometimes on Sundays,” Jordan says. “To keep Helen company. And Raylene is a mess. I’ve been offering her some legal counsel. Sometimes I think she goes out to the river to cry just so that no one will hear her. I caught her out there last night.”

  “She looked upset,” Clare says.

  They watch each other in a showdown across the desk. Neither of them notice the older man outside the room until he swings open the glass door to Jordan’s office. The man grabs a chair and pulls it to sit in close conference with Jordan and Clare.

  “Phil, this is Clare O’Brien. She’s a friend of Sally Proulx’s. Arrived the other night. Hoping to help. Clare, this is Philip Twining. My partner.”

  Philip extends his hand. “Sorry to meet you under these circumstances.”

  “Thank you,” Clare says.

  Philip Twining is short, a round belly stretching his golf shirt, his gray hair combed over. He slumps in the chair and grips its armrests.

  “You missed the meeting,” Jordan says. “The JJ & Sons lawyers were all here and you weren’t.”

  “I couldn’t find a clean shirt,” Philip says.

  “Christ, Phil. You heard of a dry cleaner?”

  “I’m a pathetic bachelor divorcé,” Philip says to Clare. “I can barely keep myself fed, let alone dressed.”

  The smile Clare offers hardly masks her distaste at his comments, but Philip takes no notice.

  “I read through the memo you e-mailed,” he says to Jordan. “What did I tell you? You don’t hire a bunch of highway pavers to put up a building, no matter what the deal might be.”

  “Let’s talk about this later,” Jordan says.

  “These guys don’t know what they’re doing. Have you looked at the inspection report? The whole foundation might need to be redone.”

  Clare can’t gauge the look Jordan gives Philip, whether it’s impatience or even a twinge of disgust. Anger. They all turn at the bang announcing Ginny’s arrival through the front door. She lifts her sunglasses and offers them a cute wave through the glass. Philip ri
ses from his chair and meets her at Jordan’s office door, lifting her off the ground in a grandfatherly hug.

  “How’s my girl?” he asks, setting her down. “You need some money?”

  “Don’t give her any money,” Jordan says, rolling his eyes.

  “Says you!” Ginny extends a flat palm to Philip.

  Philip fishes his wallet from the back pocket of his shorts and hands Ginny a fifty-dollar bill. She snatches it with glee, planting a kiss on Philip’s cheek and raising her eyebrows to Clare. At his desk, Jordan gathers his things, packing up the laptop and checking his pockets for keys.

  “We should go,” he says.

  “We should let Philip take us to lunch,” Ginny says.

  “I’d love that,” Philip says.

  “Helen wants you home,” Jordan says. “And I promised Clare a lift back. I don’t want to sit in traffic.”

  “Blah,” Ginny says, pouting.

  They leave the office in formation and walk the length of the hallway towards the back of the building, passing an even larger office that must be Philip’s. At the end of the hall Jordan presses open a fire door that leads to the parking lot. In the brief time Clare’s been inside it has clouded over, the light dulled, the air heavy with coming rain. Beyond the lot is the construction site, men in hard hats gathered in a circle in the shade, one dousing himself from a water bottle. FUTURE HOME OF THE MARGARET HAINES HOUSE. JJ & SONS. The heat makes Clare unsteady, the events of the morning already too much to process. You don’t hire a bunch of highway pavers to put up a building, Philip had said, and Clare cannot shake the look Jordan gave him when he did.

  “I’ll be back in a few hours,” Jordan says to Philip. “Will you be here?”

  “Yep,” Philip says.

  He opens the back door for Ginny, then the passenger door for Clare. She arches as his hand slides up her back to guide her in. They don’t mean anything by it, her mother used to say about the men who’d squeeze the younger Clare’s shoulders or reach out to tug the curls of her hair. The older men especially. They just feel it’s their right, Clare’s mother used to say. Philip might intend his touch to be gentlemanly, old-fashioned. But Clare never believed that they don’t mean anything by it. She’s grown to sense a man’s intention through his touch. His audacity. Something is always meant by it. It said something about Jordan that he struggled not to boast at his own goodwill. And it says something about Philip Twining, Clare thinks as she watches him round the car to the propped door of the office, that he’d place his hand so intimately on a woman he just met.