Beneath the Ashes

by Dea Poirier

  “Hey, how are you doing?” he asks, his voice quiet, like he’s trying not to be overheard.

  “Fine, Noah,” I say, and suddenly words fail me. What do I say? How do I say it? I’ve delivered this kind of news at least a hundred times before. But to Noah? I’m not prepared for this. Though he hasn’t told me much about his past, I do know how strained things are between him and his family. What if he lost his last chance to put things right? Do I want to be the one to deliver that blow? I take a deep breath, and the words finally rise to my lips. “A reporter here told me that something happened to your dad,” I manage, feeling very much like I need to tiptoe around this.

  “Oh, that. Yeah,” he says, as if I’ve told him it’s going to rain tomorrow.

  “Are you okay?” I ask, a bit taken aback. Clearly, he knew. It’s obvious in his tone. If he knew, why didn’t he tell me?

  “Yeah. I’ve got to go to the funeral and wake tomorrow,” he states matter-of-factly. Though I knew that his relationship with his father was tenuous at best, this is much more apathetic than I would have expected out of him.

  “Do you want me to come?” I ask, before realizing I can’t really do that. But if he needs me, I’ll find a way to do it.

  “No, it’s fine,” he says, brushing my offer aside.

  “What happened?”

  “He had stage-four cancer. I didn’t know about it until the day before he died. My brother Lucas called me to say that he wanted to speak with me before . . .”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” I manage after a long pause.

  “Because I don’t like getting into this family stuff. It doesn’t matter.”

  His words sting. Maybe because I want him to share those things with me. Maybe because I’m frustrated that I never had the option to keep anything about my family to myself. My dark past was laid bare before him.

  “It matters to me because it’s part of you. It made you who you are,” I say, trying my best to convey my feelings. Things like this have always been difficult for me. It’s hard enough for me to open up to anyone, but the thought that I’m opening up while Noah is shutting me out—that’s not something I can stand. He’s gotten to see the good and bad, the painful parts of my past. He knows how I fell apart after Rachel died, how my family was splintered, how my mother and father became so distant they may as well be strangers.

  “I don’t want to get into this. My past is just that. My family is part of that past. It’s something I’ve left behind me.”

  But he hasn’t. He’s there with them now. It’s not part of his past if he’s still living with it, carrying that burden. And I know he is. Anger rises inside me at his words.

  “I sure wish that I had that option with my past. But you’ve gotten to see it all; you’ve gotten to dig into it, whether I liked it or not. That seems pretty one sided to me. Hell, you got to write a story about it and had a front-row ticket to my sister’s murder investigation.” My words come out harsher than I mean for them to, but I don’t regret them.

  “Then I don’t know what to tell you, Claire,” he snaps. “Take it or leave it.”

  He’s never spoken to me like this before. It catches me off guard and puts me on the defensive. I can’t help the next words when they rise to my lips. “You know what? I need some space from this until you figure things out.”

  “Hold on—are you breaking up with me?”

  “I need space to think. If you’re not going to share things with me, if you’re going to choose what parts of your life I get access to, that doesn’t work for me.” Silence thickens on the line. I glance at my phone to see if the call dropped. “I guess I’ll see you around, Noah,” I say before ending the call.

  I get up and pace the room for a minute, needing to do something. The phone feels heavy in my hand, and I know what I need is to talk this through with someone, even if only so I don’t call him back. Plopping down on the bed, I search out Roxie’s number on my phone. Roxie and I worked together at Detroit PD for several years before I moved back to Maine. It was so difficult to leave her behind when I came back here. Though I’d never wanted to leave Detroit in the first place, leaving Roxie, one of the best friends I’ve ever had, was almost enough to make me stay. But my hometown’s need to solve a murder case and their desperate plea made up my mind for me.

  I need get her take on this. She answers on the second ring.

  “Hey, stranger,” she says, the smile obvious in her tone. Just hearing her voice eases the tension in my shoulders. And for the first time in several hours, I feel like I can really breathe.

  “Hey, how are things with Lila?” I ask.

  She lets out a short, humorless laugh. “Over.”

  I turn over onto my stomach, propping myself up on my elbows. My heart aches for Roxie. I’d hoped that she and Lila would sort their differences out again. When they’re together and things are good, they’re really good. “Why didn’t you call me?”

  “I’m still processing it,” she says. “I was going to call you soon. I just hate failing again.”

  “You didn’t fail.” Times like this, I wish I were still back in Detroit. I don’t want Roxie hurting there all alone. If I were there, I’d take her out for drinks and get her so trashed she wouldn’t even remember Lila’s name.

  “That’s not how it feels right now. But I couldn’t pretend that I wanted more with her. It just didn’t feel right,” she explains, her voice thick with exhaustion.

  “I’m sorry,” I say, because I don’t know what else would help.

  “Anyway, let’s talk about you. I can’t think about Lila right now.”

  “Are you sure? I’m here if you want to talk.”

  “I know. Come on. What’s up?” she presses.

  With Roxie I can cut past all the bullshit, the how are yous, the small talk. Roxie is a meat-and-potatoes kind of friend, no bullshit you don’t want.

  I word vomit it all out to her. Noah being so guarded about everything—sure, he made it clear he’s not happy with his family, but he was there for one of the worst parts of my life. He’s seen bits of me that no one else has ever seen, aspects I didn’t think I could show anyone else. Sure, Roxie knows, but that’s different. My past would never make her look at me differently. But it sure as hell would make most guys do a double take.

  “So let me get this straight,” she says once I finally come up for breath. “Someone died, and he didn’t bother to tell you? Not even a text?”

  “Not just someone,” I clarify. “His dad. His dad died. I texted him this morning, and he said everything was fine. He’s keeping things from me.” The detective alarm bells are going off so loudly in my brain I’m sure Roxie can hear them. Because it’s never just one thing. There are always more. What else is he hiding? What else will he hide? I pinch the bridge of my nose as my eyes sting. I will not cry over this, over him, but fuck, the betrayal is like a punch in the gut.

  “Jesus Christ,” she says.

  “Am I crazy? I should be pissed, right?” This relationship shit is still so foreign to me. I’m on uneasy ground. I’ve never been in this deep before. With other guys I could cut the strings and not give a shit. But Noah? I don’t want to do that. I don’t know what’s reasonable and what’s irrational. It was so much easier when I didn’t let myself get attached.

  “You have every right to be pissed. After everything he knows about you, how is he lying to you about this?” she asks. Her words are clipped, like she’s as angry as I am. It only makes me love her more.

  “What do I do, Roxie?” I ask, allowing myself to fall back on the bed, the phone still clutched to my ear. More, I don’t understand why he’d lie about it. If there’s anyone in the world who would understand, it’s me.

  “Kick his ass,” she growls. “No, I’ll come there—we can do it together.”

  A laugh slips from my lips. I can imagine her doing it too.

  “Really, though, you’ve got to ask yourself, ‘Is it worth fixing?’ And even if you fi
x it for now, can you trust him again after this?” she asks.

  The words roll around in my brain, swirling with the anger. Do I trust him enough to fix it? Do I want to fix this? If I close my eyes and imagine my future, what do I see? Who do I see? The key in my pocket must weigh a thousand pounds.

  But she’s right. I know my answer.

  Roxie and I talk around the Noah issue until I can’t stand the way his name sounds on my lips anymore. The conversation shifts to her cases, then to mine. I tell her about the MO of the killer, and she offers to reach out to her contacts at the FBI to run it through the database. I’ve always felt like these kills couldn’t be our perp’s first; he likely has others. Maybe that data can help us find other victims far outside of this net.

  We finish up the call, and though my heart is still heavy, I do feel better.

  CHAPTER 10

  My eyes sweep across the bedroom in my rental, and my stomach clenches. All I can see is Noah here. This place is filled with too many memories. His jacket is still slung over the back of one of my dining chairs. A sigh slips from my lips. I’m going to have to move. All I can imagine is how I’ll see Noah in every corner of this house from now on. Just like how I used to see Rachel around every corner.

  Roxie texted me this morning that she intends to come to Maine for the weekend. She’s coming to visit family and wants to make sure I’m holding up all right with my break from Noah. I’m also hoping that while she’s here we can go over some of the data she’s found in the FBI database for the MO of my perp. Even though Dr. Munroe is in custody, we’ve still got a case to build.

  I roll over in bed. The sheets are cold, and I wish they didn’t have to be. My eyes prickle when I remember what it felt like to have Noah’s body curve into mine. My phone rings, Noah’s name flashing on the screen, but I reject the call. A few seconds later, a text message dings.

  Noah: Claire, please

  I consider blocking his number, but I’m not ready for that yet. While I feel what used to be us unraveling, I’m not ready for it to be completely gone. I’m dipping my toes into the water of life without Noah. But I can’t jump in. Not yet. Instead, I delete the text, which is nearly as therapeutic. How am I supposed to be in his life if he’ll only share pieces of it with me?

  I drag out my laptop and settle it in the middle of my bed. Once it awakens, I navigate to the search engine. Though deep down I know I’m only going to cause myself more trouble and pain, I type in Noah’s name. I scan through the recent results, but none are what I’m looking for. They’re all about our most recent case in Vinalhaven. Instead, I alter it to add Noah’s hometown. Though many of the recent articles remain, a few pages in, I find something else—a much older piece of news.

  An article from the Daily Times appears on my screen.

  Theo and Celia Washington are pleased to announce the engagement of Noah Washington to Emma Abernathy. Emma, daughter of Judge Frances Abernathy and previous lieutenant governor Adeline Abernathy, is a graduate of the University of Tennessee.

  I stop reading as my stomach sours. Bile climbs my throat. Five years ago, he was engaged to someone else. And of course, he never told me. It’s one thing to not talk about family, but this? He should have told me. I snap the laptop closed, as if it’ll banish the toxic thoughts in my mind. I settle down into bed, pulling the covers up around my chin.

  A numbness washes over me, and though I expect tears to come again, they don’t. Instead, sleep takes me.

  My phone vibrates, and I glance at the screen to see Sergeant Pelletier’s name.

  “Hello,” I say after I accept the call.

  “Claire, I’ve got an update on the two men who broke into your hotel room.”

  The two. So they finally caught the second guy, then.

  “Gary Ventura and Jarod Trevino are both being held for one count of breaking and entering, one count of assaulting an officer, and two counts of possessing stolen firearms,” he says. The low hum of other voices filters through the background, like he’s walking through the bull pen.

  “Have they said anything about who hired them?” I ask as I open the fridge and grab myself a bottle of water.

  “Gary flipped on Jarod and told us where to find him. But both men still assert that they don’t know who hired them. The calls to them were untraceable.”

  I straighten at that, cracking the lid of my bottle off. “Burner cell phone?”

  “Yes.”

  “Does the number match the ones from the texts to Asha’s or Melanie’s phones?”

  “No, it was a different number,” he says, sounding as crestfallen as I feel.

  “Did you get Jessica’s devices to see if they have the same texts?”

  “We just got them from her parents. Kenneth is looking at them now. We should know something on Monday.”

  “Has Munroe said anything yet?” I ask. It’s killing me that I can’t be there for the questioning. I know this is their case, but I want to see it through. I want to nail the bastard who did this, not lose him to the DA.

  “Not yet, but we did look up some history on Gary Ventura. He used to work at the hospital with Dr. Munroe.”

  All roads lead back to that damn hospital.

  “I’ll call you if we get anything else,” he says and ends the call.

  Saturday morning a knocking at my front door startles me. I jump, realizing that it must be Roxie. I open the door to find her standing on my porch, luggage on one side and a box filled with wine on the other.

  Her dark, short hair is swept up into a fauxhawk, the sides shaved short. Roxie has high cheekbones, deep-set brown eyes, and a nose with a kink in the middle, where a perp broke it during an arrest. Down the left side of her face, a scar cuts through her brow and traces a silvery line across her sepia skin. During our time in Detroit, a lot of guys liked to ask Roxie where she was from. Roxie was from Detroit, but that’s not what they meant. What they really meant was, Who in your family isn’t white? Roxie never told them, but I came to learn that Roxie was mixed race, black and Cuban on her mother’s side and a hodgepodge of ancestry on her father’s side—eastern European, Baltic, Italian. Roxie inherited more of her mother’s features but got her father’s height. She’s nearly a head taller than me.

  I grab her, pulling her into a tight hug. “I don’t deserve you,” I say as I squeeze.

  Her leather jacket crinkles as she hugs me back. “Oh, shut up,” she says. She pushes me back and thrusts the box filled with bottles of wine into my arms. I carry the wine to the kitchen while she brings in her luggage.

  “So do I need to be your alibi?” she asks, grinning.

  I laugh and shake my head. “No, I didn’t kill him—yet.”

  She winks. “Oh, I know. Of course you didn’t.”

  After we’re done putting the wine away, I plop down at the dining room table. Roxie sits across from me. There’s another knock at the door, and my stomach leaps. But it can’t be Noah. Then I realize I ordered some groceries to be delivered last night. I let Jayden in the front door, and he lugs in several bags, placing them on the counter. I pay him, and Roxie joins me in putting the groceries away.

  “Did I do the right thing?” I ask, trying to hold the emotions at bay so they don’t overwhelm me again.

  “I can’t tell you if you did or didn’t. But I trust that you did what you needed to do,” she says.

  “Do you question breaking it off with Lila?” I ask.

  She shrugs but not in a way that’s really convincing. “Sometimes. Did he tell you why he lied?”

  “No, I didn’t give him the chance,” I explain.

  For a long moment, she’s silent. “Look, I have to say this as your friend, at least once.”

  I lean against the counter, crossing my arms as I wait for her to speak.

  “Are you sure that you aren’t looking for reasons to push him away because you’re scared? Because you don’t want to lose someone else?”

  The words feel like a physical blow
, and I bristle. My first instinct is to be defensive, to brush her off. But I can’t deny that she might have a point—though I’m not ready to admit it aloud. I’ve never let anyone in before Noah. I’ve never wanted to. So maybe it hurts that he doesn’t trust me enough to let me in the same way I’ve done for him. I open my mouth and start to say something, but the words don’t come.

  “You don’t have to answer me. I just want you to think about it. I’m always going to be on your side, but you need to take a step back on this one,” she says and grabs one of the bottles of wine.

  “It’s not even noon,” I say as I eye the bottle.

  She shakes her head. “All drinking rules go out the window during relationship crises; everyone knows that. And we’ve got two on our hands.”

  There’s no winning this argument, so I point her toward the drawer with the corkscrew. A bottle of wine and a pizza delivery later, I feel like I’ve purged most of the venom from my wound, leaving a hollowness in its wake. Tomorrow I’ll go to the Vinalhaven station, try to distract myself with work.

  “I’m thinking of moving out here,” Roxie says, her eyes on the window. “I’ve got family in Vermont. I want to be close, but not too close, you know?” she explains.

  Really? Roxie is thinking of moving to Maine? Though I would absolutely love for Roxie to live closer, this isn’t something I’d expected. I nod, though I don’t understand. If it hadn’t been for Noah and this case, I’d likely have fled to another state by now. After Dr. Munroe is charged, that may be exactly what I do, but I raise my glass for now.

  “Well, cheers to that. Whereabouts?”

  She grins. “There’s a detective job in Bangor I’ve got my eye on.”

  That’d put Roxie only a couple of hours away.

  “I heard rumors they may have two jobs up there,” she says as she leans in conspiratorially.

  “Is that right?”

  A wicked smile crosses her dark lips. “We could get the team back together.”