Forty-Four Box Set, Books 1-10 (44) (105 page)

“Yeah, that would be great.”

“Good. I’ll call you soon. Bye, Abby.”

He walked outside, past the snowboarders still standing out in the snow, their raccoon faces glowing from the fire roaring in the pit. As I watched Derek Callahan make his way to the parking lot, I wondered how much he knew about me, what other things he may have heard over the years. And I wondered if I should tell him about the ghost dog that was following him as he headed to his black BMW in the swirling, feathery snow.

CHAPTER 8

“Ms. Craig?”

It was Special Agent Felder. I was in Safeway, picking up groceries after work, when my phone rang. When I saw who it was on the caller ID, I answered right away.

“Oh, hi,” I said, wheeling my cart into an aisle and parking it. “How are you?”

“Excellent,” he said.

My insides churned around like a washing machine. I hadn’t heard anything from him in a while, even though both Kate and I had left messages. I was starting to get worried that something had happened, like the deal with Jack and the others had fallen through.

“Is there a problem?”

“No, no problem,” he said. “Everything is on schedule. I just wanted to check in.”

Down the aisle a short woman reached up and tried to grab something from the top shelf. A pile of boxes crashed down on her, making me jump.

“Oh,” I said. “I see. And Jack Mar—”

“Everything’s on schedule,” he repeated. “Mr. Martin and the others will be on their way to a high security federal prison in a matter of days. I just wanted you to know.”

I let out a slow breath, trying to steady my spinning head.

“That’s good to hear,” I said, my voice cracking a little.

“I’ll be in touch soon. Take care, Ms. Craig.”

He clicked off.

I walked over and helped the flustered woman pick boxes of pasta up off the floor.

CHAPTER 9

I finished the ritual and blew out the candle, wondering if Jesse was listening.

I was glad I was tired. After talking to Ty on the phone, a deep exhaustion hit and I was hoping that I would get a full night’s sleep. He was pretty tired too. He had been working 12-hour shifts trying to get the pub ready. I missed him.

I turned out the lights and got into bed, leaving the blinds up and the curtains pulled back so I could look outside.

It didn’t take long to drift off. But just as I fell into a light sleep, a loud noise startled me.

I sat up, trying to figure out what it was I had heard and where it had come from. It was quiet now.

I scanned the room. Everything was still, nothing was moving. I didn’t see anything. No ghosts. I sat listening to the sounds of the night, my heart on high alert, pumping fast and hard in my chest.

It was just after one and then I remembered that Kate had been out with Evan. Maybe she had come in and accidently slammed the door. Or maybe it was the ice maker. It was loud sometimes, especially when it spit out cubes into an empty tray. It was the kind of noise that could cut through a quiet house.

I slowly got up out of bed and grabbed the baseball bat that I kept by the door. I knew the bat would be useless against some things, but it felt good in my hands nonetheless. I opened the door and stepped out into the hall.

I checked the rooms. It hadn’t been Kate. She wasn’t home yet, her room still dark and the bed still made. I walked around the rest of the house, checking the closets and pantry. The alarm was still set and blinking and all the windows were locked.

I went back to my room and sat on the bed in the dark.

Just as I was feeling like I had imagined the whole thing, I heard it again.

It was a loud groaning sound coming from right outside my window. I went over cautiously and peeked out.

I almost started to laugh.

There in the backyard was the ghost dog, the one that had followed Derek, looking up and whining. When he saw me he barked and then wagged his tail.

I opened the window, letting the cold air flow into the bedroom, and called over to him.

“Hi, boy,” I said in a low voice. “What are you doing here?”

He barked again.

He looked the same as the day I saw him at the café. He appeared to be some sort of Siberian huskie, maybe even part wolf, with mismatched eyes that glowed in the reflection of the moon. His fur was thick and his tail turned up over him.

He was a little translucent, like Jesse. He looked pretty sitting there in the snow. He seemed like a nice dog.

“Okay, I’ll tell Derek that I saw you,” I said. “I’m sure he will be happy that you’re still around.”

I thought back, trying to remember if Derek had a dog when he was living in Bend.

The dog barked once more and then took off toward the fence, jumping through it and disappearing. I looked down. There were no paw prints in the snow.

I closed up and got back in bed, relieved.

***

I woke up thinking about Derek and something I hadn’t thought about in years.

We were in the fourth grade and Jesse had been home all week with chicken pox. There was a new fifth grader who started picking on me out on the yard. He was big and seemed much older, like he had been held back a few years. It started out as something small, but the teasing turned into name calling and then he started pulling my hair. By the end of the week I was afraid to go to school.

On that Friday during lunch recess, he pulled my hair so hard that I started to cry.

“Leave her alone,” Derek said, the top of his head only coming up to the bully’s chest.

“Who said that?” the fifth grader said, pretending not to see him.

“Just leave her alone,” Derek repeated.

“Oh, it’s the human bowling ball,” the bully said, holding up his hand and stretching his fingers. “I feel a gutter ball coming on.”

Before I realized what was happening, Derek drove his head hard into the large boy’s chest, knocking him down to the ground.

They rolled around for a while, flailing and throwing punches, before the yard lady pulled them apart. Derek got the worst of it. He had a bloody nose and his left eye was almost swollen shut. Except for a cut lip and a visit to the principal’s office, the bully came out of it unscathed.

But he never bothered me again.

CHAPTER 10

“Hey, Abby,” Mike said as I signed in at the start of my shift.

He was holding a clipboard and pen as the strong aroma of coffee drifted through the dark spaces of the back room. A new shipment of beans had recently arrived and there were a lot of burlap bags stacked in rows all the way down to the door.

“Hi, Mike,” I said. “Smells real good in here.”

I grabbed my apron from the hook and went up to Lyle who was standing at the front counter reading
The Bugler
.

“Your sister is an exceptional writer,” he said.

“I’ll tell her you said that.”

“This story on the fraud in city hall is vivid,” he said, folding the newspaper carefully and putting it under the counter.

It wasn’t too crowded. Tables were empty and, for a change, there was nobody in line. We were in those late afternoon hours, when things were more relaxed. Lyle had some smooth jazz playing in the background, which paired nicely with the sleepy mood in the café.

“I guess we’ll have to get used to David not being around here if the show takes off,” Lyle said.

“Yeah,” I said. “Guess so.”

It made me a little sad to think about that. But his paranormal detective TV show wouldn’t start shooting until May, and David said that as long as Mike was flexible, he would keep working at Back Street. He said he wanted to keep his job until he knew for sure that his character didn’t get eaten by a werewolf or something. 

I tore the plastic off a big bag of paper cups and started stacking them on the shelf.

“So how is Paloma doing these days?” I asked.

Other than a few texts, I hadn’t heard much from her lately. But I knew that Lyle was seeing her a lot, teaching her photography.

“She’s very good,” he said. “Very, very good. We got some nice shots up at Sparks Lake. I put one up.”

He pointed to a frame on the wall by the sugar and cream stand. I walked over to get a better look. It was stunning. The sun was just coming up, brilliant rays of light spilling across the frozen lake with Mt. Bachelor in the background. Everything was so sharp and clear and in focus, even the old log in the foreground. My photos never came out like that.

“That’s amazing,” I said. “How do you do it?”

“It’s very peaceful and beautiful out in nature, so it’s very easy for me to hear her.”

“Her?” I said, wondering if he was talking about Paloma.

“My muse,” he said. “She whispers to me out there.”

“I’m glad you put it up. It looks great in the café. All of them do, Lyle. You’re really good.”

“You should see some of Paloma’s shots,” he said. “She’s a natural. She’s picking it up really well.”

I still wasn’t exactly sure about their relationship. Obviously they were friends, but I had a suspicion that it had developed into something more. Even though Lyle was a lot older than she was, the one thing I had learned about love was that it stretched across all kinds of traditional boundaries.

I was happy for them, whatever they were, and I was betting she was happy, too. Lyle had a calm energy that was good to be around, something Paloma probably appreciated.

“Tell her I’ll call her soon,” I said.

“I’ll tell her tonight. We’re going to the Mel Brown concert at the Oxford.”

“Fun,” I said.

“Oh, yes,” he said.

CHAPTER 11

They were simple, but the cookies would do the job. I took the sheet out of the oven and let them cool for a few minutes before putting them in a takeout container and heading out to the old motorcycle garage at the south end of town.

I was hoping Jesse might come with me, but he didn’t show. I remembered what he had said about needing to recover in between visits and wondered if that was what he was doing. He still never talked too much about his world. He never told me what it was like. Even the times when I asked him straight out, he danced around it. But it made sense now why he couldn’t always show up. It wasn’t easy for him. He would have wanted to come and see his dad with me, but scheduling an appointment from the other side for a specific time apparently wasn’t so simple.

Our problems, it seemed, didn’t die when we did.

It was cold again, like it had been most of the winter, but it wasn’t snowing today and the sky was clear. I drove slow and steady, glad to have the studs on the slick Parkway. I pulled into the lot and carefully walked across it.

Over the buzz of a power tool, Van Halen blew out from the partially open door of the garage. They were before my time and I never really liked them, except for that old video for “Right Now.”

Jesse used to love to watch old music videos. I hadn’t seen this particular one in years but a line from it suddenly came to me like it was just yesterday. “Right now, God is killing moms and dogs because he has to.”

I shook it off and walked inside.

The strong smells of oil, grease, and gas greeted me, bringing back other things. Memories of Jesse. We had spent a lot of long summer afternoons here when we were kids.

Three motorcycles were inside the garage, one with most of its parts laid out on a tarp. Mr. Stone was under another bike, holding a drill. A large floor heater purred, spreading warm air around.

The place still had a charm to it, even if Jesse was right about how nothing had changed in years. The shop was as messy as ever, with tools piled up everywhere on tables and benches. But it was a special place. It always made me feel as if I had stepped into a time machine and traveled back 12 years.

The only thing missing was Jesse.

“Abby,” Mr. Stone said when he noticed me standing there. “Good to see you.”

Even his dad looked the same, with his long gray beard and those grimy glasses he always wore when he was working. He was also dressed in the same attire: An old Iron Maiden T-shirt with a short leather vest, jeans that had seen better days, and old, scuffed black bikers’ boots. 

He stood up and grabbed a rag and wiped off his hands as he walked slowly over to me. He looked around, and was quiet for a moment.

“Just me here today, Mr. Stone,” I said, giving him a hug. “But Jesse says hello.”

“Well, come on in and take a load off.”

I followed him through the garage to the small room in the back that he used for his office.

“Oh, these are for you,” I said, handing him the cookies. “Fresh out of the oven.”

His face broke into a grin and he patted his stomach, which had gotten a little bigger since I had seen him last. I was glad he had gained a little weight. He seemed older, but healthier.

“I didn’t want to get my hopes up, but I was hoping you’d bring me some more cookies,” he said. “That last batch was something else. Hold on. Let me grab us some milk from the fridge.”

It sounded a little odd, milk in a motorcycle shop, but then I remembered that Jesse had mentioned once that he had an ulcer. I sat in one of the plastic chairs by his desk and stared at some pictures on the wall I hadn’t seen before. One was a shot of Jesse in the snow, smiling and holding his board, back when he was probably in middle school. A couple of others were of the two of them camping in front of a lake, standing by a small tent.

I took off my jacket and opened the container for him. Mr. Stone handed me a cup and poured the milk into it from a small carton. He sat down and took a cookie.

“Oh, these rock as much as Sweet Amber,” he said. “How sweet does it get!”

“Are those new?” I said, nodding toward the wall.

He turned his head.

“Oh, yeah,” he said. “I came across those when I was going through some closets. We always had a good time camping.”