Liberating Lacey (15 page)

Hunter felt like shit, no two ways about it. Sleep, aspirin and a shower hadn’t done much to fight back the thickly spiked hangover pounding behind his eyeballs. Dressed in jeans and a dirty long-sleeved black t-shirt because the clean white ones were too fucking bright, he slumped gingerly into his secondhand sofa and considered the bottle of Johnny Walker Black in front of him. He remembered drinking the first third immediately after going off duty at midnight. The next third, not so much. The last third beckoned to him with the fool’s hangover remedy, but he knew getting drunk a second time wouldn’t leave him with anything but another hangover and another sick day charged to his leave balance.

Water would help. He hadn’t puked since before the shower, so he walked into his narrow, avocado green galley kitchen and gulped down a glass of tap water and waited a minute. His stomach didn’t protest, so he had another, then ran a third and went back into the bedroom to fumble his cell phone from the pocket of his uniform shirt, lying in a heap on the floor. The cream vinyl shades were down, blocking out enough daylight to keep his brain from exploding and let him see the clock on his cell phone. Just after six p.m. and surprise, surprise, he had voicemail.

He set down the glass on the battered wood dresser he’d had since he was a kid, then sat on the edge of his unmade bed to flick open the phone and retrieve the messages. One message was from his dad, asking if he could help with a cabinet install.

Yeah, he could do that…when the pound of a hammer wouldn’t shatter his head into tiny fragments. One from a buddy reminding him about the UF pickup game. One from his sergeant, asking if he’d gotten the plague because he hadn’t used a sick day in fourteen months.

The mock sarcastic question made him smile, then wince as the muscles in his forehead moved. Sergeant Langley, a five foot tall blonde female, was the best superior officer he’d ever worked for. She ran a tight crew and while she could dish out shit with the best of them, he knew why she’d really called because she eased up on the sarcasm at the end of her message, reminding him to call her if he needed anything.

The last message was from Lacey. He recognized the number when the automated voice read it off. The first five seconds of the message were silence, then her voice came soft and tentative.

“Hunter, it’s me…I know you’re busy…and you said you’d call when you could…but would you just let me know you’re okay? I…” She said something unintelligible then finished with, “Okay, bye.”

106

Liberating Lacey

He automatically flipped the phone closed, then winced at the unreasonably loud clap it made. Rubbing his forehead against the shooting twinge turned into rubbing his forehead in disgust. She’d called twice before. He’d kind of blown her off.

No
kind of
about it. He’d blown her off for a few days, only to discover he missed her, so like an idiot he’d blown her off for a few more. To his dismay, missing became
wanting
. Then the worst day of his working career hit him. The best part about being a cop was that he never knew what was coming when he got in the car.

Some days that was the worst part of being a cop.

A hangover was almost as good being shitfaced at taking his mind off what happened, but now
what happened
was back at the front of his mind and his stomach didn’t feel so good. He shoved the phone in his pocket and made his way back to the sofa and sat down. The bottle sat there, a sullen reminder of his weakness, so he got to his feet and poured the last third down the kitchen sink. The amber liquid swirled hypnotically over the dulled, scratched stainless steel, then disappeared, leaving behind a wet sheen and a charred wood smell. He pitched the empty in the trash.

Back in the living room he looked around the apartment, his head throbbing and his stomach heaving. The smell of vomit and dull alcohol sweat wasn’t too strong in the living room. The bedroom stank, pure and simple. He opened the windows but despite the cool air, there was no breeze. It would take hours for the smell to dissipate.

The simplest solution was to go out. He had his jacket on and keys in hand before he stopped at the door. He knew where he needed to go but seeing Lacey in his condition meant answering questions he wasn’t sure he wanted to answer. He could call a couple of other guys from the department and go out, but he didn’t have the energy. A situation like this was one of the few when he wouldn’t drop in on his dad.

And he owed Lacey an explanation.

Still, he hesitated. It only took one or two times of being the downer at the party to realize you didn’t dump the dirtier side of the job on civilians. You coped with the job by building a wall and you didn’t let the job out from behind that barricade, or a civilian inside. He had walls, good ones, six feet thick, big stones, when he joined the department. Six years on the job and he’d built a fortress, with a moat and a drawbridge, the chain rusty from disuse.

And Lacey…he shifted his keys to his left hand and rubbed his forehead with his right. Lacey was tough, yeah, but underneath the deal shark’s armor she was as clean and pretty and sweet and gentle as a woman could be. Telling her would be like tracking dog shit through June Cleaver’s kitchen.

Stop thinking, Anderson. Just drive over there. It’s not like you haven’t shrugged shit off for
people before. Just go, apologize and make another date with her.

That made sense. He decided against the motorcycle, not certain his stomach could handle the vibrations, and got in the Charger. Acid rock blasted from the speakers, making him yelp before he turned the volume down.

“Fuck, you’re in bad shape,” he muttered.

107

Anne Calhoun

The blinding glare from the LED traffic lights burned his retinas so he put on his sunglasses even though it was full dark. When he got to her house he noted the dim light emanating from the living room window. Maybe she wasn’t home. That was the light she had on a timer so she didn’t come home to a dark house when she worked late. Better park on the street rather than block her out if she wasn’t home.

He still had to knock, had to know he’d tried. His boots thunked on each step, rattling the pumpkins decorating the risers. He had her key, on his ring so he wouldn’t lose it. But he didn’t use it and rang the doorbell instead.

Sheer delight flashed in her eyes when she opened the door, but she clamped it down.

Not good. “Hey,” he said.

“Hi,” she said, but she didn’t open the door and invite him in.

Commitments weren’t really his thing, but he knew enough about women to know how to start this conversation. You didn’t have unprotected sex with a girl, twice, then go almost two weeks without calling.

“I’m sorry,” he said gruffly as he rubbed the throbbing spot in his forehead.

She wore faded jeans and a loose gray sweater with puffy slippers on her feet. Over her shoulder he could see a glass of wine and a hardback book, open but face down on the coffee table. Soft classical music trilled from her iPod speakers. It wasn’t quite June Cleaver’s kitchen, but it was damn close.

She still wasn’t saying anything, so he continued. “I should have called…” She just nodded, her face surprisingly blank for her and for a moment he wondered if that was it. Maybe not calling for almost two weeks was enough to end things with a woman who could do so much better than a jerk too chicken to face what was happening between them.

Instead she reached out and removed his sunglasses.

He tensed but the dim, subtle pools of lamplight illuminating her favorite reading spot didn’t send sharp pains spearing through his head. The urge to look away was strong. He’d been hung over enough to know not to look in the mirror. Between the whiskey and the vomiting the whites of his eyes were probably so bloodshot they glowed.

One moment slipped by as he met her eyes and she searched his face. Another.

Then she handed him his sunglasses, stepped back and opened the door to him.

Relief made his stomach lurch almost as hard as the hangover had. He stepped in, shrugged out of his leather jacket and toed off his boots while she went to the kitchen.

She came back with a glass of ice water. “I’ll get the aspirin if you need it,” she said.

“I’m good for now,” he said and eased into the soft leather at one end of the sofa.

She settled herself at the other end, her back to the arm, her feet tucked protectively under her and her arms wrapped around her knees. “That looks like a spectacular hangover,” she commented idly.

108

Liberating Lacey

“It is,” he said, and waited. The single cushion between them felt like a mile, and the silence like a brick wall. When it became clear she wasn’t going to say anything, he said, “I guess I should go first.”

She just nodded, a small smile on her lips, and reached for her wine.

He didn’t know how to start, what to say, so he started like he was reading his report. “Tuesday afternoon I was the first officer on scene of a child abandoned at a local superstore. When I get there the manager tells me the kid’s been wandering around for a couple of hours. They’d paged for a parent but no one came. So they set the kid up in the office with some graham crackers, a juice box and a couple of Matchbox cars, and started searching. No one was sick or dead in a bathroom or a storeroom, so they called 9-1-1.”

He took a gulp of the water. “The kid’s getting bored with pushing two cars around so his eyes light up when he sees me. I get down on his level and ask him if he knows his name. He does and he’s four years old, but he holds up three fingers at first. He doesn’t know mom or dad’s name. All he knows is that dad brought him and left him in the snack bar with a bag of popcorn and a soda. He wandered into the toy section eventually. The staff noticed him when he basically took apart the dinosaur display to get at the T-Rex. We do all the usual stuff, call CPS, start reviewing security tapes. Sure enough, a man came in with the kid and left about eight minutes later. Ninety minutes passed before anyone figured out the kid was alone.” He didn’t have words for what it was like, the tiny office full of people, the manager, the woman from the snack bar, eventually two other officers and his sergeant and a weary CPS employee and this little kid, with his brown eyes and longish brown hair, cut unevenly over the ears, totally lost in the mess of trying to figure out who he was, where his parents were and what to do with him. One of the teenage employees had been playing with him but had to start her shift. The kid squirmed and grabbed himself. Sergeant Langley asked the kid if he had to go potty and he nodded, but then pointed at Hunter.

I want him to take me,
he said.

Hunter started to protest but Langley, on the phone with the county records department, just looked at him like
for fuck’s sake, Anderson.

Easy for her to say. She had four kids. Hunter didn’t even have plants. The boy seemed to know the basics so Hunter just stood outside the stall, then helped him wash his hands. The kid was playing with the water, splashing his shirt and Hunter’s cuffs before Hunter shut off the water and handed him a couple of paper towels.

When’s Daddy coming back?

He’d had the wind knocked out of him plenty of times, but never without being physically hit. A body slam. A fist to the gut. Something. When he got his breath back all he had was a shitty answer.

I don’t know.

109

Anne Calhoun

He didn’t bother to say something made-for-television, like
We’ll find your daddy,
because he knew how futile that kind of search was. When a parent wanted nothing more to do with a kid, it was shockingly easy to just disappear. His face must have showed something when he got back to the office because Sergeant Langley told him to go outside and double check the parking lot for the father’s vehicle. An unnecessary task, but he was grateful for the distraction.

He came back to the silent, warm room, Lacey curled up with an empty wine glass, watching him. How long had he been staring off into space, lost in memory?

“I’ve taken kids from homes plenty of times,” he said hastily. “The first time or two sucked. Everyone’s crying and screaming and you have to wait for someone to bring you a car seat from the precinct. After that, I was good with it. When mom’s a meth whore and dad’s gone or beating the kids and there’s no heat or water or food, it’s better for the kid in the end,” he finished, because yeah, the foster care system just rocked.

“I would imagine it’s different when a father abandons his child,” she said.

“Yeah,” he said, staring unblinkingly at the French doors to the sun porch because the last thing he wanted to do was cry. “Yeah. It’s different. So, ah, that’s why I haven’t called.”

She didn’t challenge him, or his house-of-cards timeline. She didn’t dig for the details, or bemoan the state of the American family, or even ask where the kid was left.

Not much of a praying man, he thanked God for her silence because right now the moat was dry, the drawbridge down.

But when the silence stretched, then doubled back in on itself, he took a deep breath, broke his stare and looked at her. She sat forward and put her hand on his, the tight clasp warm and comforting. They sat like that, breathing together, until he cleared his throat and rubbed his forehead again. His stomach rumbled in a reassuringly normal way. As easily as she’d held his hand she broke the contact, leaving a warm palm-sized patch to cool without her touch.

After pushing to her feet she picked up their empty glasses and nodded toward the kitchen. “Come on,” she said. “You sound hungry.” He was, so he followed her into her kitchen and watched as she fried bacon to make a thick grilled cheese and bacon sandwich for him, keeping quiet the whole time. The silence, broken only by the soft clink of utensils as she worked, settled his nerves and the greasy meal went down easily. She loaded the dishwasher while he scoured and oiled her cast iron pan for her. By then it was nearly ten.

“Are you working tonight?”