Page 79 of Call Off the Dark

Genessa was late, stuck in traffic.

Helen sat down on a stool at the bar to wait, vaguely aware of the man in the Carhartt jacket seated next to her. She rested a hand on the bar and felt her palm stick to the wood. A bartender with a goatee glanced up and said, “What can I get you?”

“Whatever,” Helen said flatly.

The bartender raised an eyebrow, and Helen straightened up, deciding to try to make a partial effort. She gestured at the man next to her. “What’s he having?”

The bartender said, “A Rusty Nail.”

“Is that strong?”

“Pretty strong.”

The man nudged his glass a few inches toward her. “Try it.”

She waved her hand. “Oh, no. Thanks, but . . .” She nodded at the bartender. “Rusty Nail.”

“Any particular Scotch?”

“Oh, it’s Scotch?”

The man next to her smiled and nudged the glass another inch toward her.

“Oh, fine.” Helen took a sip and crinkled her nose. “Shit, never mind. Just give me a Rum and Coke.”

The bartender went to make the drink, and Helen slid the glass back toward the man. “Thanks.”

He told her his name was Wade, and she explained she was waiting for her cousin so he wouldn’t think they were starting up something. But by the time Genessa arrived twenty minutes later, it was starting to feel like they were starting up something.

It was so unexpected. Helen smiled several times, genuinely, during her conversation with Wade. And because she thought she was just passing a few minutes of meaningless time, she told him things she didn’t normally tell anyone. She told him that Tyler had been murdered three months ago and that she had to go to three doctors to get some pills because she thought the Uber Eats delivery guy had Tyler’s face.

Wade seemed unfazed by it all: the murder, the hallucinations, Helen’s blunt admissions. At the time, she took it as a sign of an open-minded man, someone who was understanding and complex. Only much later would she wonder if it was actually apathy.

When Genessa arrived, Wade asked for Helen’s number.

The conversation had been the first enjoyable thing that had happened to Helen since Tyler’s death, so she thought, Why not? and gave it to him.

Helen carried an armful of her clothes from the living room to the bedroom. Wade was picking her up at the apartment at six o’clock for their date, and her place looked like a dorm room. She was surprised to realize that she cared what he would think of her place. She did, but only a little.

Back in the living room, she picked up the strange little journal that sat on her coffee table and opened it to a random page. The journal was over half full with frantic, heartbroken ink scribbles across the pages. Most of it was unreadable. It was some version of shorthand that no one, not even Helen, knew. In all of the pain, she needed to journal, but her thoughts were always coming faster than her hands could ever move. Most of the words were represented by one or two letters only. When she looked at the pages now, she couldn’t read them. But she could still feel every ounce of them.

It wasn’t a journal so much as it was a downpour.

She tucked it in the entertainment center drawer, next to her Glock 9mm.

Wade took Helen to a restaurant where they ate fish and chips and talked. He didn’t ask her if she’d rather be a housecat or a lion, and they didn’t banter about the different colors of olives. But he pulled her chair out for her at the table, and he told her about running the family farm, and she noticed his lips were well moisturized, as if he’d just put balm on them. He explained that he’d been in Seattle for about a month, temporarily working for a construction company while he planned for his dream of living off the grid with the money he’d made from selling the farm.

There were lulls in their conversation where neither of them spoke for several minutes, and maybe in a different lifetime Helen would have found those silent interludes awkward, but there was something nice about it now. She would simply scan the restaurant or look out the window at the people on the sidewalk, and then her eyes would return to Wade’s. She saw the way he was gazing at her, like she was sweet and pretty. She wasn’t sure she was either of those things anymore, but she liked that he seemed to think so. Something about him made her feel deeply feminine and a little less tired. Toward the end of the evening, he said, “You’re easy to hang out with.”

When he kissed her good night at her front door, she confirmed that, yes, his lips were soft. It had been almost nine years since her first night with Tyler. Almost nine years of kissing her favorite lips in the world and only those favorite lips, and suddenly here were brand-new lips. Surprisingly, the kiss with Wade felt nice. The unfamiliarity of it was exciting.

She wondered what Tyler would think of her kissing another man so soon after his death, but she immediately knew the answer. He would never be mad at her for something like this. He’d want her to be happy. The bigger problem was that kissing Wade gave her a flicker of excitement in the moment, but later it opened up a deep fracture of sadness. It reminded her that Tyler’s lips were gone forever.

She didn’t plan to go on a second date with Wade. It was much too early for her to be dating anyone.

That night, she wrote more words in her strange little journal, unreadable scribbles of sorrow.

A few days after Helen’s date with Wade, Detective Calhoun called and asked Helen to come into the station.