Karin Slaughter - Faithless

“Yeah, you, too.”

Mindy gave Nan a furtive look. “See you later.”

Nan waved, and Lena said, “Bye.”

The door closed, and Lena felt like all the air had been sucked from the room. Nan was still blushing, her lips pressed together so tightly they were turning white. Lena decided to break the ice, saying, “She seems nice.”

“Yeah,” Nan agreed. “I mean, no. Not that she’s not nice. I just… Oh, dear me.” She pressed her fingers to her lips to stop them.

Lena tried to think of something positive to say. “She’s pretty.”

“You think so?” Nan blushed again. “I mean, not that it matters. I just-”

“It’s okay, Nan.”

“It’s too soon.”

Lena didn’t know what else to say. She wasn’t good at comforting people. She wasn’t good at anything emotional, a fact that Greg had cited several times before he’d finally gotten fed up and left.

“Greg just knocked on the door,” Nan said, and when Lena looked out the front door, she added, “not now, before. We were sitting around. Mindy and I. We were just talking and he knocked and-” She stopped, taking a deep breath. “Greg looks good.”

“Yeah.”

“He said he walks in the neighborhood all the time,” Nan told her. “For his leg. He’s in physical therapy. He didn’t want to be rude. You know, if we saw him in the street and wondered what he was doing back in town.”

Lena nodded.

“He didn’t know you were here. Living here.”

“Oh.”

Silence took over again.

Nan said, “Well,” just as Lena said, “I thought you were at work.”

“I took the morning off.”

Lena rested her hand on the front door. Nan had obviously wanted to keep her date a secret. Maybe she was ashamed, or maybe she was scared what Lena ’s reaction might be.

Lena asked, “Did you have coffee with her?”

“It’s too soon after Sibyl,” Nan told her. “I didn’t notice until you got here…”

“What?”

“She looks like you. Like Sibyl.” She amended, “Not exactly like Sibyl, not as pretty. Not as…” Nan rubbed her eyes with her fingers, then whispered, “Shit.”

Lena was yet again at a loss for words.

“Stupid contacts,” Nan said. She dropped her hand, but Lena could see her eyes were watering.

“It’s okay, Nan,” Lena told her, feeling an odd sense of responsibility. “It’s been three years,” she pointed out, though it felt like it had barely been three days. “You deserve a life. She would want you to-”

Nan cut her off with a nod, sniffing loudly. She waved her hands in front of her face. “I’d better go take these stupid things out. I feel like I have needles in my eyes.”

She practically ran to the bathroom, slamming the door behind her. Lena contemplated standing outside the door, asking her if she was okay, but that felt like a violation. The thought that Nan might one day date had never occurred to Lena. She had considered Nan asexual after a while, existing only in the context of their home life. For the first time, Lena realized that Nan must have been terribly lonely all this time.

Lena was so lost in thought that the phone rang several times before Nan called, “Are you going to get that?”

Lena grabbed the receiver just before the voice mail picked up. “Hello?”

“ Lena,” Jeffrey said, “I know I gave you the morning off-”

Relief came like a ray of sunshine. “When do you need me?”

“I’m in the driveway.”

She walked over to the window and looked out at his white cruiser. “I need a minute to change.”

Lena sat back in the passenger’s seat, watching the scenery go by as Jeffrey drove along a gravel road on the outskirts of town. Grant County was comprised of three cities: Heartsdale, Madison and Avondale. Heartsdale, home to Grant Tech, was the jewel of the county, and with its huge antebellum mansions and gingerbread houses, it certainly looked it. By comparison, Madison was dingy, a lesser version of what a city should be, and Avondale was an outright shithole since the army had closed the base there. It was just Lena and Jeffrey’s luck that the call came from Avondale. Every cop she knew dreaded a call from this side of the county, where poverty and hatred made the whole town simmer like a pot about to boil over.

Jeffrey asked, “You ever been out this far on a call?”

“I didn’t even know there were houses out here.”

“There weren’t the last time I checked.” Jeffrey handed her a file with a slip of paper containing the directions paper clipped to the outside. “What road are we looking for?”

“ Plymouth,” she read. At the top of the page was a name. “Ephraim Bennett?”

“The father, apparently.” Jeffrey slowed so that they could check a faded road sign. It was the standard green with white letters, but there was something homemade looking about it, as if someone had used a kit from the hardware store.

“ Nina Street,” she read, wondering when all of these roads had been built. After working patrol for nearly ten years, Lena thought she knew the county better than anyone. Looking around, she felt like they were in foreign territory.

She asked, “Are we still in Grant?”

“We’re right on the line,” he told her. “ Catoogah County is on the left, Grant is on the right.”

He slowed for another road sign. “ Pinta Street,” she told him. “Who got the call first?”

“Ed Pelham,” he said, practically spitting out the name. Catoogah County was less than half the size of Grant, warranting no more than a sheriff and four deputies. A year ago, Joe Smith, the kindly old grandfather who had held the post of sheriff for thirty years, had keeled over from a heart attack during the keynote speech at the Rotary Club, kicking off a nasty political race between two of his deputies. The election had been so close that the winner, in keeping with county law, was decided by a coin toss, two out of three. Ed Pelham had entered office with the moniker “Two-Bit” for more reasons than the two quarters that went his way. He was about as lazy as he was lucky, and he had no problem letting other people do his job so long as he got to wear the big hat and collect the paycheck.

Jeffrey said, “The call came in to one of his deputies last night. He didn’t follow up on it until this morning, when he realized they’re not in his jurisdiction.”

“Ed called you?”

“He called the family and told them they’d have to take it up with us.”

“Nice,” she said. “Did he know about our Jane Doe?”

Jeffrey was more diplomatic than Lena would have been. “That cocksucker wouldn’t know if his own ass was on fire.”

She snorted a laugh. “Who’s Lev?”

“What?”

“The name under here,” she said, showing him the directions. “You wrote ‘Lev’ and underlined it.”

“Oh,” Jeffrey said, obviously not paying attention to her as he slowed down to read another sign.

“ Santa Maria,” Lena read, recognizing the names of the ships from her junior high school history class. “What are they, a bunch of pilgrims?”

“The pilgrims came over on the Mayflower .”

“Oh,” Lena said. There was a reason her school counselor had told her college wasn’t right for everyone.

“ Columbus led the Niña , Pinta and Santa María .”

“Right.” She could feel Jeffrey staring at her, probably wondering if she had a brain in her head. “ Columbus.”

Thankfully, he changed the subject. “Lev’s the one who called this morning,” Jeffrey told her, speeding up. The tires kicked back gravel and Lena saw a cloud behind them in the side-view mirror. “He’s the uncle. I called back and spoke with the father.”