Drake continued to the door as thoughts of Braxton, his mother, Jayne, Val, Hearsay, Grams, even himself floated through his mind. Each of them faced challenging days ahead that required guidance, shaping, sustenance.
And maybe, hope.
* * *
BY EARLY THAT afternoon, Val had folded up the trash in the flattened plastic bags and stacked them next to Drake’s office door, figuring he could haul them in his truck somewhere, ‘cause this girl had paid her trash-hitting dues for the day, thank you. Then she went inside the office, nearly dropping to her knees with gratitude upon feeling the rush of cool air.
She headed to the bathroom and dabbed herself with damp paper towels. It would take a fire hose to get the stink off her skin and clothes, but a pat here and there made her feel a bit refreshed. After unlocking the door, then grabbing her lunch from the minifridge, she sat at her desk and checked her phone.
No message or call from Drake, but he was busy handling urgent family matters.
As she took a container and plastic spoon from the bag, her thoughts drifted to Drake and his family. Didn’t know anything about his mother or grandmother, but a man who would drop everything out of concern for his family got big bonus points from this girl.
She knew more about his dad. In that photo at Dino’s, she had seen an approachable and gregarious man. And that the picture still hung on the wall, some twenty years later, spoke of others’ abiding affection for him.
Approachable and gregarious hardly described Drake. But the way Jayne, who kept her feelings wrapped up tight, had treated him with respect and entreated him to stay in her back office said a lot about his reputation and integrity.
Drake was loyal to his family and friends, a man of character who earned people’s respect. But it bothered Val how he could sometimes be so cold and forbidding. Not that she was Miss Perfect, but she liked to laugh and express herself, would rather try something silly than settle for the boringly familiar.
Were she and Drake too opposite to make a relationship work?
She opened the container and breathed in the scents of cayenne pepper and garlic in Char’s homemade green gumbo. She was stirring it, admiring the chunks of okra, carrots and collards, when she heard a man’s raspy voice.
“Hey, how you doin’?”
Startled, she looked up. A middle-aged guy in a red-white-and-blue plaid shirt, a packet of cigarettes sticking out of the pocket, stood in front of her desk. His hair was combed back, emphasizing his broad face, shiny with perspiration. Squint lines etched the skin around his eyes.
“I’m Tony Cordova. Drake around?”
“Sorry, no. Want me to give him a message?”
“I’ll leave my card.” He pulled one from behind the cigarette pack and laid it on her desk. “He knows who I am.”
She glanced at the card, saw he was an arson investigator. Probably investigating the fire at Drake’s home.
“Would you like his cell phone number?”
“Already have it. Didn’t know he was working here, though, until Sally told me.”
“Sally,” she repeated.
“Bartender at Dino’s.”
She recalled the woman. Thirtyish, slender, pretty in a rock star kinda way with her spiky black hair and tight jeans and top. Guess Drake told her he was working here. Guess they were good friends.
“Looks good.” He grinned, gesturing at the gumbo. “Could smell the cayenne in the parking lot.”
“Green gumbo. My cousin made it.”
“Ah, nothing like homemade. My wife was quite the cook herself. Always took the time to do it right.” He paused. “People live too fast these days. Fast food. Fast internet. Slowness, my friend, is the essence of knowledge.” He pointed to his card. “When you give that to Drake, tell ‘im I got some news, would like to meet as soon as possible.”
As he walked away, she noticed he had a slight limp. Wondered if his reference to his wife in the past tense meant they’d divorced, but she doubted it. Few men spoke fondly of their ex-wives. Plus, when he spoke about her, the look on his face had been one of bittersweet reflection.
She tasted the gumbo. Delicious, but cold after being in the fridge all these hours. Some things were better hot.
Which made her think of Drake again. She reclosed the gumbo container, thinking she needed to put a lid on her hot Drake thoughts, too. It was good they’d eventually worked so well together today, but not so good to get all worked up over a man who played tug-of-war with her heart.
Whoa, her heart?
No. No. No.
This thing between her and Drake had to do with another part of her body, the part that made her palms itch and her insides sweat, and had absolutely nothing to do with her heart.
Picking up her lunch bag, she headed to the kitchenette. The problem with absolutes was they usually weren’t. If she were totally honest with herself, what had started the other night between them was not just about achy hormones.
Somehow, the man really had touched her heart.
After stashing the food in the fridge, she began rearranging the coffee cups as her mind muddled with how a man like Drake, who wore so much heavy, full-body emotional armor that he damn near clanked when he walked, had gotten through her defenses, which had hardened, too, over the years. And she knew exactly when it began.
Katrina.
She remembered those days huddled with Nanny on their roof, the two of them exposed to the rain-whipped winds, with nothing to hold on to but each other. By the second day they were so hungry, Val had fished dog snacks out of the water for them to eat. By the third day, when help hadn’t arrived, she’d kissed Nanny’s cheek, slid into the stagnant, swirling floodwaters and started swimming to their neighbor’s who had a rowboat. She still dreamed of those black, filthy waters, terrified of alligators lurking below the surface, and how she’d bumped into that corpse…
She made it their neighbor’s home, only to find it, and their boat, gone.
Too exhausted to swim, she had clung to a tree as night fell, listening to a distant woman’s voice sing “Amazing Grace” in the dark. Hours later, a FEMA search and rescue boat picked her up. Shivering from the cold and wet, she’d begged them to go to her Nanny, but when they arrived, she was gone.
Later, she learned a Coast Guard helicopter had rescued her grandmother, who’d died a few hours later. Dehydration and heatstroke, they said.
Holding a coffee cup, Val looked at the perfect box formation she had made with the other cups, wondering where to put this last one. She started to set it on top, but halted in midair.
I should never have left her alone on the roof.
She clutched the cup to her chest. The storm broke her city, and it broke her heart. She lost her innocence about life, grew tougher about the world.
Since then, some people—like Jasmyn, Char, Del and Cammie—had gotten through her defenses, but until the other night, no one had found a way to her heart. Not the part that loved her new family or was grateful to be alive. Nor the part that put faith in things unseen, like magic and mystery. Until the other evening, she hadn’t been aware of what she was missing. She had not been open to the kind of love that could heal or hurt.
That part of her heart was not only worth fighting for, it was worth risking everything for.
CHAPTER EIGHT
“NO.” DRAKE’S MOTHER stood in the center of the living room, surrounded by the Swedish modern furniture she and Drake’s dad had picked out twenty years ago. “I absolutely refuse to have surveillance cameras mounted outside this house.”
She patted her hair, a style that hadn’t changed in years—cropped close to her head, wisps of auburn framing her face. The haircut was like her, sensible yet feminine. In October she had turned sixty-five, but she looked a lot younger, probably because she stayed out of the sun, had never smoked and never drank except for a glass of wine on special occasions. She still wore her yellow bowling shirt, with “Dot” stitched in red over the pocket, from her
Friday lunchtime league. That, and her water workouts at the senior center down the street, kept her trim.
Right now the center played into their argument.
“So your grandmother likes to occasionally visit the center,” she continued. “It’s not far. I don’t need to watch her every minute. And I don’t want guests knocking at the door and knowing they’re being spied on.” She fidgeted with the collar of her shirt. “Just like Orwell’s book 1984, governments are already oversurveilling people. Next they’ll be watching us in our homes.”
“I’m not talking spying, Ma, I’m talking about Grams’s safety. Plus, face it, it’s a pain to walk all the way to the door just to find some college kid selling overpriced magazine subscriptions.”
“Which reminds me,” she muttered, “I still need to cancel one of those subscriptions.”
Drake glanced at the dice clock over the TV. It was way past snake eyes, or two o’clock. Almost two-forty. Since arriving nearly an hour ago, he had been talking nonstop to his mom and grandmother about the fire and answering a lot of questions. His mom had been walking him to the door when he’d casually mentioned mounting several surveillance cameras outside. One with a long-range view of the sidewalk, to ensure Grams traveled safely up and down the block, and the other positioned on the front porch to see visitors.
Bad move. Now he and his mom were embroiled in another discussion.
“Anyway, the senior citizen center is at the end of the block,” he continued, “which is far for an eighty-five-year-old woman. Especially one who’s driving a wheelchair in the dark after her nightly martini.”
“Have you seen her martini glasses? They hold three ounces, barely.” She crossed her arms, giving him the look that said she was in charge. The look he had seen ever since he was a kid. Back then, it was like a steel wall. No way to get over it, ram through it or dig under it. So you backed off. “No cameras.”
But as a man, he better understood that look. It wasn’t a barricade. More like a line in the sand.
Over the years he had guarded his own lines, fought hard for them, too, sometimes long after they had disappeared. But when you’re standing alone, the lines nowhere to be seen, you start to get the message that being victorious doesn’t mean you won the battle. That defending a position has more to do with one’s fears than any real threat.
He didn’t know why cameras scared his mother, and maybe he didn’t need to know. What mattered was to not fight the line, but encourage her to step over it.
“You’re right. Three ounces isn’t much. Mostly it’s her age that concerns me. She’s eighty-five.”
“Goodness, I hope you don’t broadcast my age as often as you do hers. But since you’re stuck on it, keep in mind she’s a vigorous, healthy eighty-five,” she said under her breath, “with a new hearing aid that makes her part bionic woman.”
“Good to know, because that means she can hear people and scooters and skateboards. Problem is, in the dark, they might not see her.”
She released a weary sigh. “These cameras have night vision?”
He nodded.
“How big are they?”
“Size of a golf ball. I could fit one into a bird feeder.”
“I don’t like bird feeders. I’ll be cleaning up poop all the time.”
“A fake owl, then. Lots of people have those.”
She thought about that for a moment, then nodded. “What about the front porch?”
“I could put it in a…door object.”
She frowned. “What kind of door object?”
“One of those…” He made a circling gesture. “Leaf things.”
“A wreath?”
“Yeah, a wreath.”
“It’s August. Why would I want a Christmas decoration on my door?”
“A welcome sign, then.”
“What I’ve always wanted,” she grumbled, “a picture-taking welcome sign. Isn’t that an oxymoron?”
She sounded put off, but he could tell she was considering it. His comment about Grams driving in the dark postmartini—even at three ounces—had gotten to her. “If Dad were here, he’d say ‘Dorothy, I’m not askin’ ya to give up a kidney.’”
Her features softened. “My Benny,” she murmured. “Musta heard that line a thousand times.”
She turned away, but not before he caught the quiver in her chin. His mother had always been a formidable person, the one people turned to with their problems, but she hadn’t dealt well with her husband’s passing. Maybe they hadn’t always seen eye to eye, and neither backed down from a good argument, but they’d loved each other deeply, fiercely.
In that last year of his dad’s illness, she had turned the couch around so it faced the living room window. They would sit there for hours, listening to his favorite jazz albums, especially Tony Bennett and Sarah Vaughan, holding hands while gazing at the desert willow.
She walked to that window now and frowned at the bright afternoon. “I’m not ready to lose Mom,” she whispered. As she turned to Drake, the sunlight sparked off one of her large gold loop earrings. “Or you.” Her eyes turned moist. “That fire…”
“Ma—”
“I know you said it was caused by a gas burner you accidentally left on, and I wanted to go along with that story because…well, you wanted me to, but I read an article in the paper this morning. Quoted a neighbor who said she heard an explosion, and when she looked out her window, the east side of your house was on fire.” She pursed her lips. “Your kitchen is on the west side.”
He inhaled a breath, let it out. If he had learned anything in life, it was that when the gig’s up, don’t pretend otherwise. Especially when faced with logic and facts and a mother’s love.
“The fire started in my office.”
“Arson,” she whispered.
“Yes.”
Somewhere in the rear of the house, he heard the faint beep of his grandmother’s electric wheelchair starting up.
“It’s the private-investigations work, isn’t it? This person didn’t like something you found out.”
“Something like that.”
“You and your father…”
She had never liked their lines of work. Didn’t understand why they didn’t sell tires or paint houses or anything that didn’t involve dealing with bad people doing bad things.
“Son, I know you can’t stay here because Maxine would terrorize that sweet dog of yours.” She choked back a laugh. “Sometimes that crazy cat terrorizes me, too, but Maxine adores your grandmother.” Turning serious, her eyes searched his face. “You also don’t want…whoever set that fire…to follow you here.”
He didn’t respond. Didn’t need to. She knew how his mind worked.
“Which I think is nonsense.” She turned to the wall mirror and checked her face. “Remember the old Gorman house two doors down?”
“Mrs. Gorman always looked tired.”
“You’d be, too, if you had five kids. Anyway, the house sold to a police officer and his wife. Nobody wants to mess with people who have cops for neighbors.”
The news offered some relief.
Her eyes met his in the mirror. “Go ahead and put the camera in a welcome sign. Or a basket of dried flowers. Just no Christmas ornaments.” She fluttered her fingers over her hair. “It won’t be so bad. I’m tired of dealing with those college kids hawking overpriced wares to work their way through school.”
“Hate to break this to you, but they might not be students.”
“I’ve thought about that,” she muttered, adjusting an earring. “And put up that camera owl with a view of the sidewalk,” she added. “I need to keep an eye on your grandmother. She thinks she’s the race car driver Danica Patrick.”
“That new chair goes up to twelve miles an hour.”
She turned to him. “Mother told me five.”
“Actually, it can go sixteen.” Glenda rolled into the living room in her electric wheelchair, Maxine curled in her lap. She pressed the joystick and came t
o a stop. “But I never go over ten.”
The wheelchair nearly swallowed her diminutive figure, adorned in one of her numerous caftans, this one a silky purple-orange-paisley number that could glow under a black light. Her hair, an unruly puff of white she’d “given up taming” years ago, sat on her head like a cloud. Her slim face, the color of parchment, was tinted with pink on her cheeks and bright crimson on her lips. The latter a protest against an online women’s magazine that recently admonished women “of a certain age” for wearing red lipstick.
Her jade-green eyes sparkled with interest. “Those surveillance cameras you two are talking about. Can I get a feed on my smartphone? They must have apps for that.”
“You were eavesdropping,” he teased.
She smiled sweetly. “I happen to live in this house, so if you don’t want your conversations to be overheard, I suggest you step outside.”
Speaking of smartphones, he had heard his beep earlier, alerting him he had a text message. He didn’t want to interrupt his mom and Grams asking questions about the fire, so he hadn’t checked it.
“One moment,” he said, pulling out his phone. He opened the message.
Found the cig. Now you owe me two.
He gave his head a slow, admiring shake. Val had done it. Found the needle in the rubbish stack. He was relieved and pleased, but most of all damn grateful for Val’s get-it-done attitude.
It felt as if they’d crossed a barrier, cleared the way to work better together.
“Drake?” his grandmother asked.
He refocused his attention on her face, crinkled with thought. “This person who set the fire…I’m wondering if it might be Yuri.”
Drake stared at her, stupidly wondering how she put that together.
“The Yuri,” his mother said, her voice rising, “who called here?”
His grandmother nodded. “I think he’s also the one Benny gave the ring to. Is that right, Drake?”
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