Noah leaned on his car; he must have exited the funeral home using a different route than me. My heart thudded as I recalled our last meeting together. It wasn't my finest moment, but then again, I wasn't having many of those on this trip home, to be quite honest.
Ignoring the blaring warning sirens in my mind, I approached him with my chest jutted out. "Can I bum one of those?”
He looked up, and his silky smile tugged at my heartstrings the very same as the day we met almost a decade ago. With just one look, I melted into a puddle at his feet. I suppose it was because we only have one first love, and in a way, we were a slave to their memory.
He pulled a cigarette out of his pack and placed it between his lips. Noah lit the cigarette, inhaling the nicotine with ease before handing it to me.
I inhaled until the smoke burned my lungs. I needed to feel the pain to remind me that, despite the loss surrounding me, I was still alive. I was still here.
"How did you know Callie?" I asked after a minute filled with pregnant silence.
Noah tilted his face up to the sky and blew smoke into the air like a 1950s Hollywood model.
"She was friends with Angela," he said.
The sound of her name sent tingles down my spine. Noah's wife was friends with Callie? Did that mean she was here too? Somewhere in the crowd?
He watched me as I turned around to study the guests inside the funeral home. "She couldn't get off work. At the hospital. She's a nurse," he mumbled. "So, she asked that I come. To pay her respects.”
I nodded, wishing Noah hadn't come at all and wondering if he knew about Peter being a client of Callie's on her website. Half of me wanted to scream out, to ask what he knew. But the other part of me begged myself to stay quiet. It wasn't the time or the place for such a line of questioning.
Then again, I wasn't in the right mind to carry out niceties with my ex-boyfriend. "Did you know Callie had an online website, for, you know, certain services she offered?"
Noah didn't flinch. "I did, actually.”
I swallowed hard, wishing I had liquor to accompany the cigarette. Visitors loitered outside the funeral home, chatting amongst themselves, not wanting to stay inside with all the death and grief, but not quite ready to go home yet either.
"Did Angela tell you?" I probed.
Noah rolled his eyes. "Always digging. Seems like times haven't changed one bit since high school.”
"Yup. Some people never grew up," I sneered.
Noah flicked his cigarette into the street and rubbed his temples. "I did know about it, but Angela didn't tell me. Peter did.”
Peter! There was another strike against him. But why was Noah so free to offer up this information? Unless he didn't think it was valuable?
"Peter knew about the site?" I asked with a faux sense of curiosity.
"I think he was a subscriber, or whatever," Noah said.
“How do you know?” I flicked ash away from my cigarette and wondered if I should buy a pack after this. What’s one bad habit without another?
“Well, I work at his company, if you didn’t already know. I’m the head of his IT department, so I can see the sites people visit within the company.”
I clicked my tongue. "Huh. Imagine that.”
"Listen," Noah said, running his hands through his receding hairline. "I gotta go. But stay out of trouble, will ya, Elle?”
I scoffed. "Yeah, uh huh. You too.”
Such an asshole.
In the opposite direction, my mom called my name and nodded toward the car. When I looked back at Noah, he was gone.
Twenty-Five
"Dinner will be ready soon. Why don't you go and wash up?" my mom asked.
The aroma of garlic, onion and roasting chicken filled the kitchen and snaked through to the rest of the house. My glands salivated at the thought of a home-cooked meal. Since I'd come home, my mom cooked for me almost every day, but before that? I stopped cooking after what happened to Zac. I couldn't bear to cook for one. To only put out a single place setting at the table. It wracked my heart with unspeakable pain to sit by myself with a glass of wine and no one to commiserate with regarding the difficulties of the day. At least now, I shared the table with my mom and Jack. For a little bit, I didn't feel so alone.
After Zac, a few friends from the force reached out to try and console me, to offer their sympathies and comforts. But I chose to push them away. Eventually, they grew weary of trying to break through to me. They realized it was an impossible task, and I was an impenetrable wall.
I wouldn't let anyone stop over at the apartment. I wouldn't see or speak to a soul from the department. What few friends I managed to make while on the job disappeared as quickly as the future I envisioned for myself. Even Bunny took the hint and stopped sending me letters or leaving me notes at our typical spot. My mom offered to stay with me after the funeral, but I refused.
In my bedroom, I leafed through all the notes I'd taken on Callie's case. I printed out each of the articles in the paper, along with sloppily written profiles of the small pool of suspects I'd managed to gather. As the days passed, Keygate grew more unruly about the state of the investigation. Without any leads, people feared for the safety and wellbeing of their families. Was there still a killer on the loose?
I used a grapefruit exfoliating napkin to wipe off the makeup on my face. It didn't take long for the toilette to be covered in a vast array of colors ranging from tan to black to red. I also changed out of my funeral outfit into something much more satisfactory: a faded department t-shirt, much too big for me, and a pair of running shorts. I tossed my hair up into a bun on the top of my head.
At the dinner table, my mom and Jack twittered about their plans for the upcoming week. I asked Jack about his new position at a restaurant just outside of town.
"It's going quite well," he said while he chewed a piece of savory chicken. "Although, we need to work on hiring better staff. Young kids just don't work as hard as they used to."
I nodded. "Nope. Bunch of punks these days.”
My mom reluctantly poured me another glass of wine after Jack urged me to finish the bottle. She eyed me suspiciously as I drank from the glass. With each sip of alcohol, it was another step down the path of darkness. Another step closer down the well of despair. Was I digging an even deeper hole that I couldn't pull myself out of? But in this moment, I didn't care.
After dinner, I helped my mom wash and dry the dishes. An awkward silence hung in the air. My mind, fuzzy from drinking, wandered as I used a towel to make them sparkle.
"Everything okay, Elle?" my mom asked.
I nodded. "Yeah. Sure. Everything's fine.”
"Because, you know you can talk to me, right? If there's something you need to get off your chest. I know it's been a rough few—"
"Thanks, Mom. I appreciate it," I replied, cutting her short.
She patted my back after handing me the last plate to dry. I sensed she didn't want to let the subject go but did so anyway.
"Be right back!" I called as I ventured outside. With the empty wine bottle and a few empty beer cans, I walked to the side of the house where the city-issued garbage and recycling cans stood.
I dumped everything from my arms into the can, which landed at the bottom with a harsh thud. I looked up in time to see a car driving slowly past the house. It was a black Lexus.