by JL Redington
They ordered their food and Cayman grinned at his full plate.
“What?” asked Alexa as she took her first bite.
“Oh, I don’t know. It’s just this place, I guess. It reminds me of my grandma’s house in Washington. It even smells like it. Somewhere in this diner is a tub of apples. I can smell them, just like my grandma’s pantry.”
Alexa smiled at him and they enjoyed the rest of the meal. Once finished, Cayman checked his phone, once he finished eating, to see if he’d heard back from his friend in Washington, but there was nothing yet. It had been a long travel day and Alexa was exhausted, so rather than tour the town, they drove straight home.
“I’m going to go to bed,” she said, stifling a yawn as they came through the front door. “I’m tired and I just want to spend some quiet time alone in my dad’s room.”
“Understood,” said Cayman with a smile. “I’m going to stay up a while and see if there’s any good reading material in that library. If you get lonely--sorry, never mind. I’m just going to read.”
Alexa laughed as she stood and started down the hallway. Entering her dad’s room, she walked to the closet to pick out her ‘pajamas’ for the evening. Picking up one of the shirt sleeves she held it against her cheek and then over her nose. She breathed deeply. She could still smell her dad in the shirts, but the smell was fading. That realization made her sad, though, as she knew it was inevitable. She pulled a shirt from the closet and laid it on the bed. As she unbuttoned her shirt she walked back to his dresser. Picking up his cologne again, she opened the lid for another whiff of memory. She smiled as she gently placed the bottle back on the dresser.
She took off her shirt and dropped it to the floor as she continued walking around the room, examining items left there. She unbuttoned her jeans picking up a carved Indian doll she’d admired so often as a child. She absently pulled her pants off with one hand, never taking her eyes from the doll and let them drop to the floor. She stepped out of the jeans as they hit the floor and she placed the doll back in its spot on the dresser and continued around the room.
There was a knock at the door and forgetting she had completely disrobed she went to the door and opened it, much to the surprise and joy of Cayman, who stood wide eyed on the other side of the door.
“What’s--” She looked down and her eyes widened in embarrassment as she slammed the door shut in his face.
“Hey!” he called through the door, “no need to be shy. I’d be happy to strip down to my underwear if that would make you feel more comfortable.”
Alexa could feel the heat in her face and quickly putting on her father’s shirt she opened the door.
Cayman was still there, waiting.
“That is no better than before, you know. No better at all.”
“Yeah, but it’s my dad’s room, so that kind of kills the mood right there.”
“Oooh, I don’t know…” began Cayman.
“Go to bed.” Alexa shut the door, her heart pumping. “What in the world was I thinking?”
She looked across the room at the open closet doors and saw several small boxes on the shelves. She’d never noticed these before. Curious she walked to the closet and pulled one of them off the shelf, placing it on the bed. She folded the blankets down and crawled into bed pulling them back over her. She moved the box closer, carefully opening the lid.
There were many pictures of people she didn’t know, but most of them included shots of her dad. Some showed him wearing fatigues, some suit and tie and one had him in hospital scrubs. Scrubs? What was that about? She looked on the back but there was only a number. She checked the back of the others and there were more numbers, but none really in sequence. She came to the bottom of the box rather quickly, and putting the photos back into the box, folded the flaps closed and placed it back in its spot on the shelf. She pulled another box down.
Crawling back under the covers she opened the second box. There were more photos, but this time she found a small voice recorder. She tried the play button, but apparently the batteries were dead. Frustrated she went into the kitchen to see if there were any batteries in the fridge. Her dad had always kept batteries there because he said it lengthened their shelf life. She hoped he was right because she was itching to know what, if anything was on the recorder. Just the thought of hearing her dad’s voice again made her hands shake as she grabbed the door handle.
She opened the fridge and was thrilled to find some batteries inside. But there was something taped to the batteries, a note on a piece of folded torn paper.
“Listen to me.”
It was her father’s handwriting. She stared at the writing and tears filled her eyes.
“I wish I could, Dad. I wish I could listen to you.”
Gradually a light went on in her head. She looked at the batteries and thought of the recorder she’d left on the bed in the other room.
Listen to me. Was it a message? A message from her dad? Why would he put that there? Did he want her to find the recorder? Did he know she would?
“Are you okay?” Cayman called from the living room.
“Oh, umm, yeah, fine,” she mumbled, “just getting some…”
Not finishing her sentence she walked back to the bedroom, lost in thought. She picked up the recorder and opened the battery compartment. There were no batteries in it, so she quickly placed them inside the recorder. Her hands were shaking as she turned the unit over and pressed the play button.
The voice came through distorted, slow and creepy. The batteries were no good.
“Perfect.” She said her voice thick with disappointment. She quickly removed them.
She went back out to the kitchen and brought the whole package of batteries to the bedroom. Surely some were still good. She tried several of them and finally found a pair that worked. Her father’s voice filled the room.
She lay back in bed and just listened to him speak to her. She didn’t even pay much attention to what he was saying; it was just so amazing to hear his voice. She smiled as she lay there, envisioning his face, his hair, his grin as she would hear him softly laugh into the microphone.
At light went on in her head as she remembered the note on the batteries. Listen to me. She quickly went back to the beginning of the recording and started over. She paid attention to each word but wondered after a while what she was listening to. It sounded like ramblings, like maybe he was trying to figure out what he wanted to say, or who he was talking to. She gasped and backed up the recording to replay the last few words. They can’t fly. She played the sentence over and over listening carefully to the whole sentence, but it wasn’t the whole sentence she was listening for. It was the three little words they can’t fly and how they fit into the sentence or didn’t.
“Yeah, I told him flying pigs would land on him before I would agree to that, but we both know ‘they can’t fly’.”
She quickly stopped the recording and searched the nightstand for a pad and pen. She found one and scribbled the whole phrase and sentence onto the paper. She returned to the recording and listened to more of the recording that made absolutely no sense. But soon she heard another very familiar phrase. ‘A moon of cheese? Oh, please’.
She listened to the whole sentence.
“He turned around and laughed out loud. A moon of cheese? Oh, please.”
The sentence itself and even the sentences before it made no sense, but she knew the phrases, she knew them well.
She listened a little longer to more nonsense and then another familiar phrase came up.
‘You’re the fairest of them all.’ Alexa knew the word ‘fairest’ was actually meant fair, as in being fair in her treatment of others. She remembered these.
She jumped up and ran to Cayman’s room. He wasn’t there. She ran to the living room with the recorder in her hand remembering he was going to read. She found him sitting in an easy chair reading the complete works of Sherlock Holmes. He smiled up at her and then stood up when he saw the look on her
face.
“What is it? What’s wrong.”
“I…I don’t know, maybe…maybe nothing. I found this recording and I was listening…” She could feel the tension in her body rise and the room started to spin.
“Hey, Alexa! Hold on!” Cayman grabbed her as she started to sink to the floor. He led her around to the couch and gently lowered her to the seat.
“Just breathe, Alexa. Just breathe, slow down and breathe. I’m not going anywhere, there’s no hurry. Breathe.” The soothing tone of his voice helped her relax as he sat down, facing her on the couch. “Better?”
She nodded. Taking a deep breath she started at the beginning.
“Cayman, I think I’ve found something, but I don’t know what. When I was a little girl, sometimes my dad would have people pick me up after school because he was either out of town or in a meeting. I really never knew who was going to pick me up, a neighbor, a family friend, Gina, our housekeeper. I never knew. But they always had a security phrase they would use. As soon as the phrase was used it was changed, never used again. There were some that were my favorites and I still remember them. “
“One was ‘They can’t fly’. Another was ‘A moon of cheese? Oh please.’ And then still another one was ‘You’re the fairest of them all’ but it meant fair as in playing fair and part of using that phrase meant the person picking me up had to explain that detail.”
“Okay,” he said patiently.
“Well, I found this recorder and I was listening to it…okay, first, before I could even listen to it, I went to the fridge for batteries and found this note.” She handed the note to him.
“I wondered what it meant, but went back to the bedroom and put the batteries in. I didn’t pay much attention to what he was saying, you know, I was just enjoying actually hearing his voice. Then I remembered the note. So I went back over it and started actually listening to the words. They made no sense, but every once in a while I would hear these familiar phrases. Cayman, it’s like he’s trying to tell me something. It’s a message he knew only I would understand. But just listen to it. There’s no rhyme or reason to any of it.”
They spent several hours pouring over the recording until they couldn’t listen anymore.
“We’ve gotta get some sleep, Alexa. Let’s put this away until tomorrow and we’ll try listening again on our way out to the spot you and your dad last picnicked. Okay? Can you let it go for the night? Do you need me to take it so you’ll get some sleep?”
“No.” It came out a little more forceful than she’d planned.
“Okay, okay,” said Cayman, holding his hands up, “just trying to help. Make sure you get some sleep, though, okay?”
“Yeah, yeah, I get it.”
Alexa was standing up and wandering back to her room, the voice on the recorder droning on and on. She was mumbling something to herself, oblivious to the young man she just left on the couch.
As he watched her walk away in her father’s dress shirt he sighed.
“Time for another one of those cold showers.”
Chapter Ten
Alexa finally nodded off to sleep still listening to the sound of her father’s voice. The transition from wakefulness to full sleep was interspersed with sounds from the recording, and words directly from her father, like he was standing right next to her. She woke in the morning confused and disoriented.
Cayman knocked and Alexa rolled over and moaned, “Come in.”
She lay on the bed, covered by only a sheet. The sheet did an amazing job of outlining the shape of her perfect body. Her hair was a mass of curls and sheen covering her pillow. She was beautiful, even having just awakened.
He cleared his throat and tried to sound like a man in full control of his body.
“So, I, uh, took the liberty of going shopping for some breakfast foods and…”
He was carrying a tray of that amazing coffee she remembered from their first encounter in her kitchen back in Startup. She pushed herself to an upright position, instantly ready for coffee, a sleepy but pleased grin spreading across her face. Cayman placed the tray (actually a cookie sheet because that was all he could find) in her lap. She smiled at the plate of wonderfulness before her; eggs, bacon, hash browns and sausage, all perfectly cooked and waiting to be devoured. She hadn’t realized how hungry she was until she smelled the food and then realized she was famished. She ate with abandon.
“Now I know why you always attacked your food at the diner. You must have been as hungry as I am today, only for you it was every day.”
Cayman reddened as he sat beside her.
“Actually, I have a confession to make. That dark haired guy that cooks for you?”
“Thomas?”
“Yeah, Thomas. He actually can’t cook, at all.”
“Really? Why did you keep ordering breakfast there?”
“You’re really going to ask me that? Really? I ate there because of you, of course. And if you’ll think back, I used an awful lot of Tabasco.”
Alexa started laughing.
“And why, then, did you eat like you hadn’t eaten in months?”
“Because the faster I put it down, the sooner it was gone. And the Tabasco didn’t really help all that much, but it helped enough.”
Alexa was really laughing by this time. She thought about how she’d made fun of him for eating like a heathen every time Tahleah brought his name up. Now she finds out he was eating like that to spare her feelings! The whole thing was so comical she could hardly hold the cookie sheet on her lap.
“Okay, fine, laugh it up. I was sacrificing my cholesterol for you, you know.”
“I know, I know. I’m sorry. It’s just so funny! If you only knew all the cruel things I said about your eating habits, and now I find out you were choking down every bite. That’s just too funny!”
“Really. I have half a mind to take all that breakfast and toss it down the sink. You actually made fun of me?”
“Without shame,” laughed Alexa. “Touch this tray and I cut off both your hands.”
She took another bite and, chewing slower, closed her eyes. He was right. By this standard, Thomas couldn’t cook at all.
“How about you come and cook at the diner when we get home? This is incredible!”
She ate bite after bite, stifling the small moans that escaped her throat as she chewed, savoring every morsel and swallowing so she could taste it all the way down.
Cayman studied his hands, trying to keep his thoughts where they needed to be. If she just wouldn’t moan like that it would make this whole ‘breakfast in bed’ thing a lot easier on him.
After the wonderful meal, Alexa showered and dressed and was ready for their trip to the desert. She kept the recorder in her pocket, close to her. She was not about to lose it, and heaven help the groin of the man who tried to take it from her.
They drove for about an hour and a half when Alexa pointed and said, “There, turn right there.”
Cayman slowed the car and turned off on a dirt road that looked as if it was going nowhere. They drove for another twenty minutes through large potholes and around even larger rocks.
“You sure you’re not taking me out here to shoot me and leave me for the vultures?”
Alexa chuckled and said, “Don’t tempt me.”
They arrived at the spot Alexa remembered and she pulled out the photo to match the landmarks. Exiting the car and walking a few yards to a small rise, Alexa found the area much the same as she and her father had left it a year ago.
Alexa hadn’t counted on the memories still being so fresh and painful. She stood in the middle of the small area, partially surrounded by large boulders. There were cactus randomly placed by Mother Nature but that was about all the green she could see. She felt if she listened hard enough and focused she could still hear her dad joking and laughing with her, she could see his face as he looked into the distance when she took the picture of him. She could see him place his hand over his eyes to shade them from the sun and
then quickly begin to pack things up. She relived the whole scene again. It was her last outing with her father, and she had gone over it a hundred times in her mind and now she was here, in the actual spot, doing it all over again.
She took the photo out of her pocket to make sure she was remembering the place he stood correctly. However, she soon realized she didn’t really need the photo as she remembered it perfectly.
Cayman approached her and touched her arm.
“Hey, we don’t have to do this if you’re not ready. We can come back another day, or we don’t need to come back at all. Are you okay?”
“Yeah,” she said with a sigh. I am. I--” She was looking around the perimeter as she spoke. “Here,” she said, pointing to the spot. “He stood here, I was over there and that would mean the car was out there.”
“Let’s go have a look.” Cayman started for the place where the car was parked.
“What do you think you’re going to find? It was a car, and it’s been a year. There have to have been a dozen other cars out here in that time.” She followed him out to where the car had been parked, feeling it was a complete waste of time.
Cayman walked around the area, looking…no…scrutinizing the ground around where the car would have been parked. He found a cigarette butt, gingerly picked it up and placed it in a small snack baggie he pulled out of his pants pocket. He seemed way too careful not to touch the filter end of the cigarette. Alarms went off in Alexa’s head.
“You’re doing it again,” she said, tamping down the fear. “I’ve seen enough police drama’s to know what you’re doing. You’re looking for DNA on that cigarette butt.”
“Yes, that’s exactly what I’m doing. And I’ve seen enough cop shows as well, plus I have a friend in the State Police who told me what to look for and what to do with anything I found. Thus…the baggies. I picked some up when I went to town to buy breakfast stuff this morning. Pretty smart, eh?” he grinned, obviously so very proud of what he was doing.