Always a Temp
Page 5
Over the years she’d learned not to panic, to breathe slowly through her nose, and the burning sensation, along with the terror, would pass. They already had now, leaving Callie to wonder, as always, what it was in this dream she would not allow herself to recall. What terrified her so much?
When she awoke again, sun was shining in through the window and the comforter was still covering her. No more dreams, no restless sleep.
Callie hated the dream, but she’d learned to live with it.
Now she wondered what had triggered it. She could usually link it to stress, but the greatest stress in her life—Grace’s death—hadn’t brought it on. So what was the cause tonight?
Nate. Had to be.
NATHAN WENT TO WORK and disappeared into his office, closing the door behind him. Between Callie’s visit and Suzanne’s call, he hadn’t slept much, and he was not in the mood for socializing. Barely ten minutes passed before Joy was there with the boiled lettuce juice.
“I heard there was a bit of a scene at your house yesterday.”
Nathan looked at her from beneath the hand that was propping up his head while he read.
“Yes,” she continued, placing the cup on his desk near the dieffenbachia, “I talked to Ed Nelson at the café this morning and he said you were yelling at some good-looking woman on your lawn.”
“I wasn’t yelling.” Much, he amended to himself, remembering how Callie had flinched when he’d shouted “bullshit.” He’d had no idea that Ed, his neighbor across the street, had been listening.
Joy clasped her hands together over her shapeless navy blue dress. “Was it Callie you weren’t yelling at?”
“Yes.” He had the feeling from her body language that Joy had something to say on the matter, and out of curiosity, he waited, wondering if she was going to mention the fact that Callie had not come home to be with Grace when she was dying. But Joy didn’t say anything.
Finally he gave in and asked, “You were a friend of Grace’s. Did she ever mention anything about what happened between Callie and me at the end of high school?” Do you understand that your normally sane employer had a reason for yelling at a woman on his front lawn?
And had Callie gone with Grace’s blessing? He’d never been able to figure it out the few times he’d talked to her after Callie had disappeared. Grace had simply assured him that her niece was fine, and had obviously wanted him to let the matter rest.
He’d been so frustrated. Callie was safe, but for reasons unknown, did not want to talk to him. His brothers were the only people he’d ever spoken to concerning the matter, and he hadn’t said much. Since he’d left town himself for a summer job shortly after graduation, and went on to college in the fall, he figured no one cared what had happened. So what if nerdy Nathan Marcenek had been blitzed by tornado Callie? But Wesley was a small town and gossiping was a hobby for some.
Joy contemplated him as if looking for signs of a hangover. “I vaguely remember people wondering why she took off like she did.” She shifted her mouth sideways in a thoughtful manner. “And it was kind of obvious a few days ago that you didn’t want her back in your life.”
He really was going to have to remember to close the office door.
“So Grace never said anything?” He felt ridiculously like an insecure teenager as he asked the question.
“Grace was protective of Callie,” Joy said after a tactful pause.
“That didn’t work in the other direction, did it?” he asked darkly, truthfully. Callie hadn’t been protective of Grace.
“No.” Joy shook her head, the fluorescent light glinting on the few strands of gray in her black hair. “It didn’t.”
The phone rang, and ironically, Joy, who’d planted herself in his office without invitation, appeared relieved to have a reason to escape. He didn’t blame her. “Do you want me to close the door?”
“Please.”
A moment later, she sent him an e-mail, apparently not wanting to risk a continuation of their previous conversation. Mitch Michaels would be showing up for his first day of work next Monday. Did he want her to reschedule Katie’s office hours so they didn’t coincide?
Nathan considered it. Then he came up with a better idea. He wrote a quick reply, telling Joy to leave Katie’s hours as they were. Mitch would be working in the basement on the archives. The kid wouldn’t see the light of day while he was in the office. Vince might be able to force Nathan to babysit his son and try to teach him a work ethic, but he didn’t have much say in what the kid actually did.
SINCE CALLIE ALWAYS FELT unsettled and basically rotten the morning after the dream, it seemed a perfect time to dive into Grace’s personal files. The accountant had phoned the day before and had reported the estate was all but settled, so now it was up to Callie to finish her end of the deal so that she could move on.
She soon came to realize, though, that no time was perfect for diving into personal files. Grace had kept everything, from the warranty on her new kitchen faucet to the property deed, in a tall, wooden, three-drawer file cabinet. Callie sorted for two hours, keeping the documentation that would be handy to the new owners of the home, tossing paperwork on items that were long gone.
In the back of drawer number two, she found a file with her name on it. Even though it held the paperwork on the foster care arrangements, this was much less distressing to her than finding her schoolwork and certificates in the old lingerie box in Grace’s dresser had been.
The folder contained duplicate immunization records, her high school transcripts and SAT scores, among other things. She glanced over the foster care papers, then closed the folder and stashed it in the box she was putting in storage back in California. Someday. She wasn’t sure when. It was going to take some time to go through the house single-handedly, and she was going to take that time. She needed it, to make peace with herself for not being there when Grace needed her.
She finished the third and final file drawer just before noon. She had a giant bag of paper to be shredded or burned, and a giant headache. Time for iced tea and a peanut butter sandwich, even though it felt as if a stiff belt of vodka would come closer to hitting the spot.
She dragged one of the wicker porch chairs out into the tall grass under the elm tree and ate in the shade. It was hot, but she wanted to be out of the house, away from the memories.
The kids next door were playing in the vacant lot that separated their houses. Callie could hear them arguing about who was pitching and who was hitting, and wondered if a ball would soon come sailing over her fence, perhaps followed by a white-haired kid.
She clinked the ice in her glass. The grass desperately needed to be cut. She’d put the job off twice because she hadn’t wanted to tackle the mower. Although she’d done well with her tire store job, she was not the most mechanically inclined person, and was fairly certain the mower would win if it came down to a battle of wills. When she’d been a teen, Grace had beaten the mechanical monster into submission, somehow managing to get it started every weekend so that Callie could mow the lawn and earn her allowance. Now she was on her own.
In this corner, Callie McCarran, and in the other, Lawn-Boy…
But maybe Grace had a new mower. Callie got out of the wicker chair and walked to the shed, flipping open the latch with a quick movement of her thumb. It took a moment for her eyes to adjust, but as soon as they did, she recognized her old opponent lurking in the far corner.
Okay. Maybe she’d hire a kid to do the job—one with his own mower.
Feeling better about the lawn situation, she was about to close the door when she suddenly recognized the weirdly shaped dusty object with garden tools leaning against it. Her old bike, her once beautiful Trek, with a coil of hose hanging off the handlebars. Callie swung the door open wider and stepped inside, amazed that Grace hadn’t donated the bike to charity years ago, and ridiculously happy that she hadn’t. Callie removed the hose and laid it on the useless lawn mower, gathered the rake, hoe and shovel and jammed the
m into the corner.
After a quick spider check, she wiped the cobwebs off and lifted the bike, coughing as she accidentally inhaled some of the dust that had settled on the frame. She hauled the Trek out of the shed and laid it on the lawn, then turned the hose on it. Years of dirt and spiderwebs washed into the grass and disappeared.
Her baby was a wreck.
The tires were flat, the chrome pitted and the seat cracked. The chain hung sadly. She found the hand pump in the shed under the tool bench and tried to put air in the tires, but it was no use. The inner tubes were goners, having endured extreme temperature changes over the past decade. Callie propped the bike against the shed door and considered what she’d have to do to make it operational. Everything. A complete overhaul and tune-up were in order, but for the moment new tubes and tires and an oiled chain would probably suffice.
She’d never been a cycling maniac like Nathan and his brothers, but she’d loved her bike and had enjoyed getting from point A to point B under her own steam. She still liked the idea, and with the Neon acting up, an alternate mode of transportation was quite possibly a godsend.
And maybe a way to connect with Nate, because damn it, she wasn’t giving up. Her old friend was in there somewhere, and truthfully, the man he had become was very, very attractive. He also appeared to be lonely, and if he would just listen to reason, he and Callie could solve both problems at once.
CHAPTER FIVE
“IT’S YOUR TURN TO FORCE Dad to go to the doctor,” Garrett said over the phone in his commanding cop voice.
Nathan was not one bit impressed. “I’m behind schedule,” he answered, changing computer screens to pull up his calendar. “And it’s not my turn.”
“It is, too, and you’re always behind schedule.”
“The news never stops.”
“Come on, Nate. You’re better at this than I am.”
“You’re a cop. Coercion is part of your business. Anyway, it’s Seth’s turn.”
“Hey…” Nathan could hear his brother flipping through his desk calendar. “You’re right. It’s your turn in October.”
“Can’t wait,” Nathan said drily. His other line lit up. “Gotta go. Call me if you need backup.”
“I can’t imagine not,” Garrett said succinctly before hanging up.
John Marcenek had had no problems with doctors until he started having health issues related to high blood pressure, which culminated in a ministroke that he sneeringly called “the episode.” After that, he developed a strong dislike of those in the medical profession—especially those who told him to stop drinking and lose weight if he wanted to avoid future “episodes.”
The truth was hard to handle, especially when it involved changing a lifestyle filled with manly habits such as eating bags of chips and pork rinds during the televised game and drinking too much. He’d left law enforcement after more than thirty years—fifteen spent as county sheriff—when he hit the mandatory retirement age. After that he poured his energy into being chief of the volunteer fire department. John Marcenek was accustomed to command and didn’t take well to being ordered around. Even for his own health and well-being. Garrett and Seth were very much like the old man, with he-man occupations John approved of and he-man hobbies. Nathan had always been the odd man out—the son his father didn’t understand. The son who wrote and drew. Because of that, Nathan actually was the best candidate to strong-arm his father to the clinic. Since they had never seen eye to eye, he was used to his dad’s bellowing, and took it in stride. If he hadn’t developed that ability, he would have imploded long ago.
The only time he’d seen a different side to his father was after his accident. John had hovered uncomfortably near his bedside in Seattle, while Seth and Garrett held down the fort in Wesley. His dad hadn’t said much about the injury itself, talking instead about sports and stuff, but after that Nathan was convinced his dad loved him in his own way. John would never understand his middle son, and wasn’t going to try and Nathan had learned to accept that.
CALLIE CLOSED HER LAPTOP and pressed her fingertips against her forehead. She’d been back for three weeks, had sorted through all of Grace’s belongings. The estate was settled and still…nothing. No words. She would start writing, then suddenly feel the need to wash walls, sort out stuff in the basement, escape the keyboard.
Her last finished piece had been the Kazakhstan article, written after her trip had abruptly ended, when she’d gotten word of Grace’s death. Callie had composed the contracted article in a numb haze. She’d written in airports and hotel rooms on her fractured journey here, since getting a quick flight home from central Asia wasn’t exactly a piece of cake. She’d been practically finished by the time she’d gotten to the States, did the last editing the night before leasing the Neon from the friend of the friend to drive to Wesley, and had submitted by e-mail.
She couldn’t remember a word she had written. She didn’t know if what she’d sent in was a piece of crap or up to her usual standards, and she hadn’t been able to bring herself to open the file on her computer, for fear of what she might find. So when the check arrived in the mail, forwarded from her San Francisco post office box, she decided the piece must have been adequate, because the payment was unusually rapid.
Now she had some money to tide her over until she received her substitute teaching license or Mrs. Copeland called from Tech Temps. Callie was hoping for the latter. She still wasn’t certain how she felt about subbing, but what concerned her more was the lack of spark in her writing. Something had to change. Or else she was going to have to change her occupation, perhaps even take up something permanently.
Callie didn’t want to do that. She needed the freedom to get up and go when she felt the urge.
She did have an idea niggling at her that she thought would make a very nice submission to the Wesley Star. Maybe she’d write it, submit and see how Nathan reacted. Perhaps now that he’d vented the frustrations he’d had bottled up for ten years, he’d be more reasonable.
Callie certainly hoped so, because that was an integral part of her plan.
It wasn’t difficult to hunt down Denise Logan, the female firefighter. Callie asked about her in the grocery store, and the clerk, not knowing that Callie was a horrible person who had abandoned her foster mom, told her a few things about the woman. Like where she lived. With that information Callie was able to dig up Denise’s phone number and arrange a coffee and an interview at the new café.
Callie was waiting in a red upholstered booth when Denise came in at exactly two-thirty—a time when the place was nearly empty, and they could talk and not worry about taking up a table. Denise smiled and raised a hand when she spotted Callie. Her long blond hair was pulled back in a ponytail and she was wearing almost exactly the same outfit as Callie—a formfitting T-shirt, denim skirt and leather sandals. She looked nothing like the all-business firefighter Callie had seen the previous week.
“Thanks for coming,” Callie said as Denise slid into the booth.
“Hey, thanks for asking me. I’ve never been interviewed before.” Denise waved help at the waitress who came out from behind the counter. They ordered iced tea, and then Denise settled back in her seat and waited for the questions to begin.
Callie pulled out her small tape recorder. “Do you mind if I record your answers?”
“Not at all.”
“You grew up around here,” Callie said. She remembered the Logan kids, all several years younger than herself. The junior and senior high schools were combined. “Did you always plan to stay in Wesley?”
“Oh, no,” Denise said with an easy smile. “I went to the University of Nevada, Reno, got my degree in fire science at their school near Carlin. But—” Denise held up her palms, her expression philosophical “—there are no jobs, so I moved home.”
“Why did you get a degree in a field where there are no jobs?”
Denise’s eyes brightened. “Because when there is a job opening, I’m going to get it.”
“I’m a bookkeeper at the junior and senior high.”
“And they give you time off when you get a fire call?”
“That’s one reason I work there.”
“Are there other reasons?”
“Well, the hours are good. I work from seven to two. Also—” she smiled ironically before sipping her iced tea “—I didn’t have a lot of choice. The school district is one of the main employers in the county. If there’s a non-mining-related job to be had, there’s a good chance it’s at one of the schools.”
“That’s what I discovered,” Callie said, then told the story of her own search for a temp job.
“So you only work temp?” Denise seemed surprised.
“I’ve never been on a job for longer than six months.”
“Wow. I don’t know whether to be impressed or appalled,” the blonde said candidly.
“Working temp allows me to write for a living. Travel. Fun stuff like that.”
“Sounds cool, actually, so I guess I’ll go with being impressed. I subbed for a while before I got the bookkeeping position.”
“What’s substitute teaching like?” Callie felt compelled to ask the question, hoping for a reassuring answer.
“Like holding thirty corks underwater.” Denise laughed at Callie’s horrified expression. “Sorry,” she said with a shrug. “But it’s true. Be prepared to be busy.”
“Tell me about fire school.” Callie changed the subject back to research, and made a mental note to pop in and see Mrs. Copeland at Tech Temps on the way home.
“It’s rigorous, but so worthwhile….” Denise answered questions for almost twenty minutes before the café door swung open and a group of high school boys traipsed in, laughing and pushing one another, obviously glad to have made it through the school day. Thankfully, they settled at a table across the room from Callie and Denise, but one kid smiled at Denise in a confident and blatantly wolfish way before turning his attention back to his buddies. Callie was amazed at the balls of the kid. Denise worked at his school and should command a degree of respect rather than the once-over he’d just given her.