Calico

by Callie Hart

  “Great. So what do I need to do exactly?”

  Sam the Priest shrugs, still catching his breath from his push-ups. “Once the body’s been released from the morgue, you just need to arrange a date. Typically, it takes about ten days to organize everything once that’s happened.”

  “Ten days?” I feel like the trodden-down brown carpet beneath my feet has suddenly split open and a gaping hole has formed in the ground, trying to suck me under. “I can’t be here for ten days.”

  Sam’s brows pinch together, his brown eyes clouded with concern. “If there’s anything I can do to speed things up on my end, rest assured I’ll do it, of course. Usually family members like to make sure they give enough notice to acquaintances of the deceased, so they can make travel arrangements, though. And florists, caterers, staff… these things all take time to arrange.”

  I don’t know what staff Sam thinks I’m going to need for this thing, but it sounds like he’s expecting a considerable amount of fanfare. “What do you mean, morgue releases his body?”

  “Well, if your father had died of something straight forward,” he shrugs, “like a heart attack or pneumonia, it would be pretty cut and dried. Since he was murdered—”

  A strange buzzing sound starts ringing in my ears. I can see Sam the Priest’s mouth moving, but I can’t hear a damn thing over the buzzing; it’s so intense and violent that it feels like it’s about to rattle the insides of my head into soup. I hold up one hand, stopping Sam in his tracks. “I’m sorry, can you repeat that? The murdered part.”

  Sam’s eyes grow fat and round, white showing everywhere. “You didn’t know?”

  “I got a phone call. I was told he’d passed. He’s been an alcoholic as long as I’ve been alive. I just assumed…”

  Sam pinballs his head from side to side, looking a little gray all of a sudden. “Malcolm’s been sober the past ten years, Coralie. I mean, I’ve only been here for three, so I can only vouch for those years, but that’s what he told me. He showed me the chip they gave him at AA. No, I’m afraid Malcolm was stabbed to death. They found him face down on the road out by Palisade Bridge with a kitchen knife sticking out of his chest.”

  “Palisade Bridge?”

  Sam nods gravely. “Sheriff Mason said he hadn’t been out there long. Maybe a couple of hours. They’re still looking for the perpetrator. Or perpetrators. Malcolm was a big man. Might have been that a few of them for all we know at the moment. I’m so surprised the police didn’t call and tell you. Surely that must be standard procedure?” He looks genuinely perplexed, and I almost feel sorry for him.

  I was experiencing a flutter of similar emotion, right up until he told me where my father’s body was found. Palisade Bridge. The exact same bridge where my mother died. It would be too much of a coincidence for my father to have been attacked and brutally murdered at the exact same spot where my mother died. Which can only mean one thing: he killed himself. He stuck that knife into his chest himself, hari kari style, and the police haven’t said anything to poor, unsuspecting Sam the Priest for a very good reason. People who kill themselves aren’t allowed a catholic burial. People who kill themselves aren’t allowed to be interred in consecrated ground. For one fleeting, awful moment, I think about spilling the beans to Sam. Ruining my father’s funeral plans will hardly make up for the years of misery he put me through, but it might make me feel a little better. My lips are parting, my brain already stringing the words together, but then I remember my meeting with Ezra, the clause where I don’t get my mother’s belongings if I don’t give him this ridiculous service he so badly wanted. I’m willing to bet that clause still counts if Sam refuses to oversee this midnight mass of Malcolm’s.

  “Wow. I really had no idea,” I mutter. “I’ll make sure to stop over at the station after I’m done here with you.” I’m not very convincing in trying to convey surprise, but Sam still places his hand on my shoulder and gives it a comforting squeeze.

  “He’s at rest now, Coralie. There’s no need to worry about him anymore.” Sam doesn’t realize that my father’s probably dancing on hot coals somewhere south of the theological border; I’m sure Malcolm never confessed the nightmare he put my mother and me through before he found Jesus and quit the bottle. If he had, Sam would be a little more aware of my couldn’t give a shit attitude. I make a mental note to call Ezra and ream him out for not telling me about the suicide thing.

  Sam hugs me when he bids me farewell, which makes me feel a little uncomfortable, and I leave feeling completely unsatisfied. So much for tying this thing up in a neat bow and getting the fuck out of here. Looks like I’m going to be stuck here for at least a week, even if I do manage to hurry things along. I open up the rental, toss my purse onto the backseat, and then freeze, suddenly gripped by an all-consuming, paralyzing fear. The rear of the lot where I’ve chosen to park the car overlooks the cemetery to the rear of the church, and in the sun-filled cemetery, Callan Cross is sitting Indian style in front of a pale gray marble headstone.

  I can only see the back of his head, but I’d know him absolutely anywhere. Back when we were teenagers, he used to crop his hair close to his skull, so I could run my hand over the short spikiness of it, scratching lightly with my nails while he melted under the attention. I loved when he let it grow out a little, though. When it was just about long enough to start curling in thick, dark licks of hair that always made me so jealous. It’s like that now.

  His shoulders are broader than they used to be. He was broad back when he was seventeen, but even then it was obvious he was going to be taller, bigger, stronger when he hit his twenties. Now I’m sitting here, staring at his back, remembering digging my fingernails into the first time I ever had sex.

  I immediately want to clamber into the rental and get the hell out of here, but some morbid, cruel part of me wants me to suffer. Wants me to stand by the ivy-covered wall barricading the cemetery from the parking lot and spy on him like a creeper. I do it, leaning my elbows against the crumbling stone and the twisting fingers of greenery, ignoring the fact that my position is uncomfortable, allowing my eyes to drink in the sight of my soul mate.

  My heart sings and weeps in equal parts.

  Callan is talking, his shoulders moving up and down as he breathes deep and slow, and I wish I could hear what he is saying. There’s only one person he could possibly be talking to so comfortably in a graveyard, and that’s Jolene Cross. Over the years, I’ve been hit with successive waves of grief over the fact that I never got to say goodbye to Jo. She was still alive when I ran from Port Royal, though often confined to her bed and barely able to stand for long periods of time. I feel a sob forming in the back of my throat; I let it grow and ache there, but I don’t let it out. I allow the burn of sadness on the insides of my body these days, but never on the outside. It’s too much. Too much to remember. Too much to suffer through. Too much to stuff back down inside myself once I’m done feeling melancholy.

  Callan leans back, supporting himself with his hands, which are planted in the grass behind him, and I find myself fascinated by the way his muscles twist around the structure of his arm, corded and strong. I think I see the black lines of a tattoo inching up the length of his right forearm but I’m too far away to see properly. He used to ask me to draw on him when I was a teenager. Hours spent with my tongue poking out of my mouth as I concentrated over concentric circles, caricatures and curlicues. He was my living, walking and talking notepad, and he never seemed to mind.

  “Everything okay, Coralie?”

  I nearly jump out of my skin at the sound of the voice behind me. I spin around, and there’s Sam still in his workout gear, one eyebrow hooked into a curve. He was all condolences and if-there’s-anything-I-can-dos back in the rectory, but now that he’s caught me spying on people in the cemetery he’s looking a little rankled. As well he should, I’m sure.

  “Sorry. Just taking a breather before I get back in the car,” I say. I shrug with one shoulder, trying to make out like I
wasn’t just boring holes into Callan Cross’s back. “It’s so calm out here. Peaceful. With everything that’s going on at the moment, I just needed a quiet second to gather myself.”

  Sam almost looks like he believes me. That is until Callan’s voice calls out, echoing in the most unnerving way around the small dell formed by the tall trees lining the perimeter of the cemetery. “Coralie?”

  It’s been over ten years since I’ve heard that man say my name, and yet right now it feels like I just heard him say it yesterday.

  You have to stay. What can I do to make you stay?

  I instinctively fold in on myself, my shoulders pulling up around my ears. Sam frowns, peering over the top of my head to see who’s shouting my name. The frown deepens. “Do you know that man?” he asks.

  I shake my head.

  “Well, he’s coming this way.”

  My hands move frantically, scrambling to yank the keys to the rental out of my purse. “Thanks again for your time, Sam. I’ll be in touch with the information from the—”

  A hand skates along the top of my shoulder, barely making contact, sending a violent wave of longing and pain through my body. Back when we were younger, Callan knew exactly how to touch me to make me fall apart. He could make me forget everything but him on a daily basis. Seems like he hasn’t lost that skill. “Coralie Taylor,” he says softly. “I knew you were close by.”

  I close my eyes. Stop breathing.

  I hear Sam introduce himself, and I listen as Callan talks behind me, his breath skimming over my neck and my bare shoulder blades. He always ran hot. Seems as though that hasn’t changed, either. I can feel the heat pouring off him, burning into me, making the tiny hairs on the back of my neck and the backs of my arms stand on end.

  “—my Mom. It looks great back there. Thanks for taking such good care of the place.” Callan’s talking, but there’s an absent note to his voice. He’s not really thinking about the words coming out of his mouth. Not really thinking about Sam, or the fact that his mother’s grave has been well tended to. He’s leaning into me, the way I’m leaning into him, like our souls are goddamn magnets, unable to resist the forceful draw of the other.

  I shake my head, not ready to turn around and face this ghost playing havoc with my heart. “Thanks, Sam. I really do have to get going. I’ll come by after I’ve spoken to the people at the funeral home.” I rush past him, wringing the straps of my purse in both hands, eyes on the floor, too scared to look up. At least I now have my keys in my hand. The rental beeps as I unlock it. I reach to open the driver’s door, but another hand gets there before mine, pulling up the lever.

  “Southern manners aren’t dead, y’know?” I look up, and Callan’s face is so painfully close to mine. His dark brown eyes are just as I remember them—deep, like the unending darkness you see when you look into the bottom of a well. That may sound romantic, but it’s not. It’s unnerving. Like you’re peering into eternity, and if you venture too close to the edge, you might just tumble and fall. Fall forever. When I last looked at his facebook page, hating myself every second of the way, he had a full beard. It has suited him, but he must have shaved it off recently. Now dark stubble marks his jaw, instead, barely a few millimeters long.

  The dimples that always marked his cheeks are still there, and have, in fact, grown deeper since high school. And those lips, lips I remember with a startling intensity as they kissed me for the first time, are still full and blushed and biteable. They curve into a wicked smile as Callan’s eyes scan over my features, no doubt recalling the contours, dips and rises of my own face. “Hey, bluebird,” he whispers. “I’ve been dreaming about you.”

  God, I can’t be this close to him. It takes such effort to lean away from him. Ironically, the way I tilt my shoulders means that I’m facing him, though, and my back automatically arches, pressing my chest closer to his. I can’t help it. No matter what I do, I’ve always had the hardest time denying the way my body reacts whenever I’m around this man.

  He’s the same as he always used to be, and yet he’s very different, too. God, I had no idea I would remember or feel so much when I looked at him like this. I’m not ready, not prepared. It’s all too hard.

  “Hi, Callan,” I whisper. “I have to go.”

  He shakes his head. “You really don’t.”

  “I do. I have to be somewhere.”

  He shakes his head again, but he doesn’t say anything.

  “I have to be on my way, too,” Sam says, completely oblivious to the tension that’s about to blow a nuclear sized hole in the St. Regis parking lot. Neither Callan nor I look at Sam as he says his goodbyes and leaves, climbing into one of the parked cars and driving away. We just stand very, very still, staring at one another.

  “You planning on saying anything any time soon, bluebird?” he whispers.

  My tongue is sticking to the roof of my mouth, refusing to function. I have to wrestle words out of my mouth, when every part of me wants to remain silent forever. The last words I said to Callan Cross were these:

  Don’t follow me. I’m sorry. Goodbye.

  If I say something else, my last words to him will be changed. I’ve born the weight of the command I gave as I fled his house for so long now, stumbling under the pain of it time and time again, when I’ve felt weak and lost and I hated myself for telling him not to come and find me. But now that I’m in a position to change that, I don’t know that I should. The years since I left Port Royal have been hard, but I’ve survived, haven’t I? I’ve made it through. If I even utter one word to Callan now, I’m going to end up hurt again. It’s almost guaranteed. And I can’t withstand that kind of heartbreak ever again. I just can’t. I swallow, looking down at his hand, which is still on the car door handle. My stomach turns when I see the black lines of scribble marked on his skin.

  Familiar. So familiar. A tiny bird in flight, quickly drawn lines barely bisecting in places, mapped out quickly and with little thought. I used to draw those birds everywhere. Without thinking, I reach out and take hold of his arm so I can turn it and get a better look. Sure enough, it’s one of the last things I ever drew on him. “What…what the hell is this?” I ask.

  Callan jerks his arm away from me, hastily rolling down his sleeve. He looks away, squinting into the distance. There are fine lines between his eyebrows now—lines that weren’t there before. I wonder whether stress put them there, or if it was just the amount of time that’s slipped between our fingers.

  “That is the last thing you left with me,” he says quietly. “I should have asked the tattoo artist to include someone shooting the damn thing out of the sky, right? There probably should have been a lot of blood. Would have been a better representation.”

  “You shouldn’t have done that.” I wince at the tattoo he made out of my scribble, hating the fact that he had it traced over, line for line. It was a messy, rushed moment when I was distracted, trying to tell him something awful. I’d been away for two weeks in New York at the Institute of Fine Arts. Or at least that’s what Callan had thought.

  “Why not?” Callan leans against the car, preventing me from opening the door. Blocking my way is a well thought about move to stop me from running, but he makes it look like he’s just getting comfortable so we can talk. So we can catch up, like old friends.

  “Because. You were supposed to forget about me. You weren’t supposed to get a permanent reminder.”

  “Is that what you did? Forgot about me?” Callan’s never been one to mince his words. He stares at me, linking us with this fierce connection that makes my toes curl inside my shoes. He smiles a humorless, unhappy smile. “I didn’t think so. You didn’t need a tattoo to be haunted by me every single goddamn day, did you?” He holds up his wrist, showing me the offending ink after all. “I didn’t need this to be plagued by memories of the past, Coralie. I have my own brain for that. I couldn’t have forgotten about you even if I’d tried. The seas could have frozen over. The heavens could have come crashing down to ea
rth. Time could have stood still, and I would never have been able to cleanse myself of you.” He sucks his bottom lip into his mouth, biting down on it in that same way he always used to, and my entire world pivots on its axis.

  I’m not over him. I never have been. I never will be.

  But I can’t be with him.

  I place my hand on top of his squeezing firmly. “I have to go, Cal. I really, really have to go.”

  He dips his chin toward his chest and looks up at me from underneath his drawn brows, his eyes narrowed. “This isn’t the last time we’ll see each other, bluebird. We’re gonna run into each other over the next week or so. Port Royal’s a small town. We share friends.”

  “We used to. I don’t know anyone here anymore.”

  “So that’s it? You’re not going to see Shane or Tina?”

  When he speaks their names, it’s as though he’s setting bombs off inside my chest. I haven’t thought about those guys for so, so long. I haven’t wanted to miss them. But as soon as he mentions them now, I’m overcome with a wave of nostalgia. “I don’t think so, Callan. I don’t think it would be a good idea.”

  Callan pulls a face, his expression filled with anger and disbelief. “That’s fucking weak. Those guys were there for you back in the day. They miss you, haven’t seen you in over a decade, and you’re not even gonna go visit them?”

  “What would be the point? The person they knew way back when is dead and buried. She died a thousand, awful, painful, heartbreaking deaths before she eventually just didn’t come back to life. They wouldn’t even know me now.”

  He leans in close, and I can’t even think straight. He smells different. He never wore aftershave or cologne before, but now he’s wearing something that seems to accent his own natural scent, filling my head, making it difficult to concentrate. “I fucking know you, Coralie Taylor.” He stabs his own chest with his index finger. “I fucking know you. I took one look at you back in that library and I knew you. I always have and I always will. That’s never going to change. You can run away for ten years. You can change your hair…wear different clothes…but there’s not a damn thing you can do to hide your soul from mine. It’s far too late for that.”