Because I Said So

by Karin Kallmaker

  The sunset reflecting on the white walls had all but gone by the time she knew she had to quit or go blind. The three skirts were constructed and one was finished except for final tailoring and hemming. Her phone chirped as she reflected on what had still been a great day’s work, all in all, and it topped off a very productive week. In spite of today, she hadn’t thought about Shannon…too much.

  But it was as if she’d said Beetlejuice too many times. There it was, a message in her inbox from ShannonD.

  “I was wondering if you’d like to talk again? We can keep it really casual,” it read. “What about The Grog and Game?”

  Oh, hell no, Kesa thought. They were not going back to that place with its memories. The strains of “Something” floated out of her brain, along with the dizzying memory of her surrender into Shannon’s arms. She glanced around her workshop, much tidier now with accessories sorted into labeled bins and stowed neatly on the shelves. The stacks of patterns that had overflowed the bookshelf at home were now in large, flat envelopes, labeled, and filed in the cabinet by style. The spindles mounted on pegboard held neatly tied off spools of industrial thread that were both useful and colorful. She even knew how she was going to decorate the walls.

  This was her place. Finally, everywhere she looked she saw herself.

  She was not going back to the woman she was four years ago, and she wasn’t going to make the disastrous, still-not-healed mistake of putting her heart on display so Shannon Dealan could decide, all over again, that she didn’t want it.

  And what the hell did “casual” mean? Casual sex? Not even a real dinner beforehand? Just sex?

  Part of her thought that was not what Shannon had meant, and another part thought that was exactly what Shannon meant. She was angriest at the part that whispered, “Sounds good, doesn’t it?”

  Absolutely not. No.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  “I didn’t want to put all of what I was thinking in writing,” Kesa said flatly. There was no cup of coffee on the table, and Kesa’s hands were clenched around her purse. “What happened was irrational and irresponsible.”

  Shannon looked down at the cup of coffee in her hand. She’d forgotten to get a wrapper to protect herself from the heat. Her hand was on fire, and the rest of her was frozen to immobility by the coldness in Kesa’s eyes. She understood now why Kesa had countered her suggestion of The Grog and Game with a return to the Nom Nom Pocha coffee shop.

  They weren’t going to be lingering.

  She sat down at the minuscule table for two anyway and studied Kesa’s rigid posture. She was wrapped tight and not giving Shannon any edges to peel open. Where had the warmer, almost friendly Kesa gone? “Are you talking about recently or four years ago?”

  “I don’t even want to think about four years ago. Though ‘irrational’ covers it as well.”

  Yes, Shannon thought, I’d been irrational, but it was probably not what Kesa was thinking about. Or maybe she was. “Is there any way to…”

  All at once she could see Kesa’s face four years ago. Her eyes alight with wonder, her mouth soft with desire—no one had ever looked at Shannon as if she was the future. Her ears filled with the tender echo of the earnest words “I don’t know how, but I love you, Shannon. I love you.” Today she was seeing a completely different Kesa, with sharp corners and flint in her eyes.

  Shannon faltered. “I mean, if Josie and Paz keep on the way they’re headed, we’re going to see each other. I was hoping we could—”

  “Make peace? We’re not at war. We’re not anything.” Kesa brushed an imaginary crumb from the table as she stood up. “If you want to talk about the kids let’s do it by email. I’m late for an appointment.”

  “Mahjong?”

  “That’s Wednesdays.” Kesa’s mouth snapped closed as if she instantly regretted the words. “A client.”

  Then she was gone.

  Shannon swallowed a large gulp of coffee, but burning the roof of her mouth didn’t melt the cold ball in her chest. What had she thought? That her personal charm and their undeniable chemistry would make a sincere “I’m sorry” on her part unnecessary? If Kesa wasn’t interested in a long overdue apology there was no way forward, was there?

  The next day she dragged herself to work and forced herself to focus. Impatient with the internal whining that robbed her of pleasure in the job, she carefully went through every new communiqué and increased her subscription to more frequent updates, almost doubling her workload. Some intense, extra-hours days wouldn’t hurt her at all. It wasn’t as if she’d replaced any of the limited socializing she’d given up by moving from Portland or done anything about training for a 10K, let alone looked up her old hiking club to get back on the trails. She ignored the sarcastic inner voice that said shutting out the world was exactly what Aunt Ryanne would tell her to do.

  The long afternoon was broken by the usual hubbub of teams coming and going. Her boss Gustavo had once asked the analysts if they wanted to relocate to the quieter admin floor below them, but they’d all said no. Hearing units preparing to go out and the debriefing when a mission was over kept them all aware that the work they did was vital to deputies, their success, and their safety.

  She plopped back into her chair after high fiving the deputy-on-point who’d talked the latest team through a combined cooperation arrest with the FBI and LAPD. The high-energy conversation in the wake of a flawlessly executed mission was a welcome upbeat moment in her day. A few taps at the keyboard later and she’d refreshed her queue of status updates and communiqués. It was a long list. With only dinner by herself ahead of her, she decided to work through it all, even if it meant staying late.

  It turned out to be a great decision. Halfway down the list she hit personal pay dirt. “Henry Lymon” had been spotted again, and in St. Catharines, south of Toronto. CCTV had picked him up, this time at a screening checkpoint in the Welch Courthouse. Facial recognition had pinged her counterpart in Canada, someone probably in a cubicle much like hers, and he had put the photo and information into the tracking queue.

  She consulted a local map and asked herself what Seychelles was doing a mere twenty klicks from the US-Canada border. The intel summary said he’d been registered leaving only a few minutes later. The video didn’t show him attempting in any way to hide his face, nor was it apparent he had met with anyone. Could he possibly believe that no one was looking for him anymore?

  Criminals got sloppy and Seychelles was a criminal, she reminded herself. She leaned out of her cubicle to see if Gustavo’s light was still on. It was, so she quickly wrote up the situation, with the fugitive practically on their border and getting closer, and caught him at his door as he was shrugging into his coat.

  She handed him her memo, with Seychelles’s dossier information redacted, saying, “I’ve got a hot one.”

  He scanned it quickly, a small frown forming. “Bank fraud. Why is this one hot?”

  “I think we have a chance of catching him if we promote him to Actively Seeking status. He’s capable of using false ID to cross.”

  Gustavo returned to his tidy desk to log back in to his personal workstation. “You know if I make this request there’s always a tech guy who wants to balk because another face adds to the server toll. Plus adding to the active list makes it harder for the agents at the borders to keep all the faces in mind. This guy’s not violent.”

  The last ended on an inquiring note, and Shannon realized she had to give Gustavo something more to explain why Seychelles should be elevated to Actively Seeking. “No, Seychelles isn’t violent.” She tapped on the redacted block. “There’s trafficking under here. Kids.”

  Gustavo blinked as he took in that information. “That’s why you’ve dogged reports of his whereabouts. I knew there had to be a reason other than financial fraud.” He glanced at his watch and wrinkled his nose at it. “It’s after six. I’ll see if I can get the Marshal to approve it ASAP so he’s elevated by tomorrow, but it might not get there until tomor
row afternoon. Unless you have specific urgency?”

  She shook her head. “Given his pace from Toronto toward the border, I think he’s taking his time. He might try it Saturday, when tourist crossings will make it more chaotic. Fewer people using NEXUS to enter the US means longer lines and more faces.”

  Glad to think she’d earned her pay and had some worth regardless of how Kesa felt about her, Shannon headed for home feeling more than a little chuffed. If agents on either side of the border caught Seychelles, it would be Cubicle Dwellers 1, Child Trafficker 0. The way it should be.

  The bus was not as crowded as it would have been an hour or two earlier and she gratefully took a seat and opened her phone to fetch her personal email. She hadn’t expected any communication from Kesa, not after yesterday’s thorough dismissal, yet she could feel her spirit deflating. That wasn’t good. A can of soup awaited her at home and she was in danger of skipping the soup and heading straight to a Beaujolais. And salted caramel gelato.

  Face it, she told herself as she trudged from the bus stop toward the house, life is changing. Paz is a grown man. Even if he didn’t get married now, someday he would. He and Josie might live with her for a few years, but her nest would be empty at some point.

  Empty.

  You’re only yearning after Kesa because you’re afraid without Paz around you’ll turn into your aunt. You love your work, she reminded herself. And you’re very good at it. Women aren’t incomplete if they don’t have a romance in their life, you know that.

  You’re not feeling incomplete, a small voice whispered. Seeing her again you remembered that you could be more… More, with her.

  She distracted the voice by heating up the soup. Why dirty a bowl and waste water washing it out? Sure, caring about the planet was why she ate it directly from the saucepan.

  Don’t do it, she warned herself, but there she was, looking in her spam folder to make sure she hadn’t received any kind of message from Kesa.

  The spam folder did have an email with the subject, “Can we meet with you?” It wasn’t from Kesa. It was from an exec of a private fraud investigation firm. She’d met the CEO of Integrity last year at the end of a long-term fugitive case where the private investigators, based in Seattle, had surfaced intel that the FBI had referred to their office. Working with a counterpart at their firm, they’d zeroed in on three fugitives living under aliases. Shannon had been the person pulling deep data on their habits, history of weapons, methods, and financial ties. The operation had gone smoothly with three fugitives in custody and a cache of military-grade weapons dug up out of bunkers.

  Why would someone from there want to meet with her?

  She moved the email to her regular inbox and read it with genuine surprise. Was “the possibility of working with you” a job offer? Huh. She was well aware that private contractors with her skill set made double and triple her public servant rate of pay, but she had no interest in private sector work.

  Did she?

  She was startled out of her bemusement by Paz’s arrival. “Have you eaten? How was your day?”

  “Good. That summer internship with Boeing called back and I have an interview. I was really starting to think it wasn’t going to pan out.”

  “That’s great news.” The internship paid well and she really hoped he would get it. It would open all sorts of doors for his future. “I had a good day myself. Likely one less slime bag walking around free, if all goes well.” She couldn’t explain more so she gestured at her phone. “And I think I’m being headhunted by some private company. They do fraud investigations, so I don’t know what they’d want with me, exactly.”

  Paz downed half of the glass of orange juice he’d poured for himself before answering. “Your terrific instincts and ability to synthesize wide data? You’re good at what you do, and it’s something they haven’t taught computers to do yet?”

  “Thank you.” She frowned and added, “Though now I’m wondering if I should be scared of Skynet.”

  Paz gave her a mock serious gaze. “We should all be scared of Skynet.”

  “I’d have to give a lot of thought to it. Seattle is even colder and wetter than Portland.”

  “It’s in Seattle?” Paz turned to the refrigerator to forage for more food.

  “That’s where they’re headquartered. If it’s some kind of job they could want me to move, I guess. But that’s a lot of unhatched chickens to be counting. It’s been in my spam folder for two days. I’ll answer tomorrow.”

  Paz wandered off to tackle homework and Shannon surfed through her Netflix queue. She couldn’t settle on anything, but at least she didn’t check her phone again for a message from Kesa that was never going to arrive.

  She’d been so cold. So final. “We’re not anything,” she’d said.

  There were enough moving pieces in her life right now. Maybe it was best to accept that Kesa was not one of them. Kesa was fixed in place, and that place didn’t include Shannon.

  Another night. So many sheep. 1000. 999. 998…

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  “You’re right. The line across here looks irregular compared to the other hip. That’s not the look we want.” Kesa used the side of her hand to lightly touch the client where her haunch was crossed by a tailoring seam of the coppery silk dress. “I can easily fix that. The drape will be much sleeker.”

  Aisha Zee frowned at her reflection in the multiple standing mirrors that Kesa had set up to give clients a 360-degree view of themselves. Additional mirrors in pleasing antique frames were so far the most expensive investment in the workshop she’d made to date, but they were proving well worth it. Clients had a better sense of the entire fit than their own home setup often allowed. “I never realized my left hip and right hip are different.”

  “It’s not noticeable,” Kesa assured her. Quickly squatting next to her, she used a chalk pencil to dot the fabric. “Only if the clothes accentuate that particular line, and I’ll fix that. Let’s take it off.”

  The evening dress was in the first phase of construction and so was difficult to get out of without unraveling the basting. The client was reasonably more concerned with the effect the dress had on her thickly twisted braids as it went over her head than about Kesa’s seams. They managed without major mishap, though.

  Aisha slipped on the light kimono Kesa handed her and plopped down into the cushioned side chair next to her cooling cup of chai tea. She stretched her legs out onto the plushy ottoman with a sigh. “Can I take a nap here? Nobody knows where I am and it’s very peaceful.”

  “Go right ahead,” Kesa said. “The door is locked, and nobody else is due for an hour and a half.”

  “What is that tree?” Aisha pointed out the window where feathery, pale pink blooms were riffling in the light breeze among soft green fern-like leaves. “Is that the perfume I smell?”

  “I think it’s a Persian silk, though someone else said it’s a Mimosa tree, and someone else said that they’re easily confused. I love the smell, but if it bothers you I can close the window.”

  “Not at all. I get to spend time in a garden instead of having another Cobb salad lunch with the other NFL wives.”

  The scent was sweet and delicate, like a floral tea with a hint of resin and earth. Honeybees clustered around it at the first-floor level, but Kesa didn’t have to worry much about them this high, though occasionally one would wander in through the window, realize its mistake, and wander out again. Hummingbirds loved the tree too and she’d already become used to listening for the buzz of their wings. Their presence felt like a good omen.

  With a swipe of the iron, the low-melt thread she’d used for construction ahead of the initial fitting disappeared. Once the garment was perfectly sized she’d go over all the seams with permanent thread and iron away the basting. When she looked up from the board she saw that Aisha had indeed closed her eyes and relaxed.

  Her decision to open a workshop had been driven by numbers, but now she saw that numbers had been only one
part of the picture. There were intangibles, especially a heightened bond with the clients. Instead of a hired-in seamstress doting on them in their boudoirs, they came to her, which fostered a subtle change in the relationship between them. The time she spent not commuting was time she could spend learning more about them and picking up small cues of likes and dislikes. She could spend time chatting over fabric swatches about whatever was on the client’s mind.

  Three new referral clients had been so eager to make an appointment and then so effusive about her “studio” that she’d cautiously marked up her rates for them. None of them had blinked an eye as they sipped sparkling water or coffee and relaxed into a comfortable chair, phone charging, shoes off, guard down. She’d finished her decorating this past weekend and so far everyone admired the result. An eclectic range of glassless frames in all sizes and shapes had come from the flea market, and she’d filled them with remnants from bolts of supple vicuña wool, liquid gold muga silks, and a wide range of thickly hand-embroidered, high texture blends.

  The fabrics had all been ghastly expensive, and she hadn’t been able to part with the odd pieces left from the original commissions even though they were nigh on useless for garments. She was so glad now that she’d hoarded them. The walls burst with rich, opulent, touchable pieces that several clients had already treated like an art exhibit to view while waiting for Kesa to finish a minor adjustment.

  Her workshop had become a place of art and air. Raising her rates for new clients had paid for her investments in chairs and the standing mirrors, and all the rest of the small items she’d needed to make her workshop look planned and not the result of yard sales and flea markets and junk dug out from under her bed.

  The mirrors reflected back to her the artisan she had always hoped to become, and she was doing her best to believe it was real and permanent. No one was lurking to snatch it all away. Instead of selling her talent with a portfolio book, the entire workshop represented her capability and sense of style. She no longer felt confined by the dim light and tight space of the apartment. The specter of the bill collectors who had followed her and Josie for years after their parents’ death was finally starting to fade.