CHAPTER ONE
2665 Words
CHAPTER ONE
Camille Grace looked around her new office and smiled. It was a small office, located in the lower level of a branch of the FBI that tended to stay busy. Somehow, she’d ended up back in New Orleans, the shadow of her childhood just about an hour away. She’d been given this office with an apology, the HR department figuring she’d take it as something of an insult.
But as far as Camille was concerned, it was perfect. It was far away from everyone else, and it was quiet. Looking around and realizing she still had quite a bit of setting up to do, she looked back over the last few days and tried to make sense out of exactly how she’d arrived here.
When Camille left Alabama behind, she'd done it without any emotion. The worst of it had been leaving her boyfriend. Declan had put up a bit of a fight, but in the end Camille was pretty sure he'd been just as relieved as she was. She also thought the move brought on no emotion because there was some broken thing inside of her that had always known her path would lead her back to Louisiana.
Upping had been there, waiting for her like a bad habit she'd once dropped and was now returning to. There was a comfort to it, sure, but there was danger there as well. She was living in an apartment just outside of New Orleans, but Upping was less than an hour south and sometimes she could hear it calling.
She'd expected Director Milton at the FBI to throw some obstacles up when she'd requested the transfer, but he seemed okay with it. In fact, he'd acted like Camille had presented him with a gift. He'd hated to see her go, or so he said, but there were three current openings with the New Orleans field office, so it worked out great.
And just like that, just fifteen days after closing a case in New Orleans and briefly revisiting her place in Alabama, Special Agent Camille Grace was heading back to Louisiana. It was the place she'd been raised and the place where her entire life had been torn apart at the age of twelve.
The echoes of her previous life in Upping had hovered over her ever since she arrived. It's why she'd worked so hard to settle quickly into her new job. Somehow, she'd managed to acquire a small office in the basement of the field office. Never having had an office before, she took great pride in setting it up as she settled in.
Determined to make a good impression and get off on the right foot with her new partners, she'd even gone so far as to order a desk, a filing cabinet, and a small couch. Everything was a mess now, but soon it would be neat and tidy, totally unlike her.
She'd been a little surprised that the only one of her new coworkers she'd met so far was Assistant Director Marie McCutcheon. As the director's right hand, she was the one who brought Camille into the office. She'd been told that AD McCutcheon was the best thing to happen to the New Orleans field office in a long time. The woman was straight as an arrow and hard as a rock. Camille detested such analogies, but she'd quickly discovered that they were true. She was fifty but had the body of someone that hadn't hit forty yet. She carried herself with great confidence that was accentuated with the fact that she knew every man she passed did a double take. Yet somehow, she seemed to not let it go to her head.
The woman's absolute aura was why Camille had still not divulged everything about her past to McCutcheon. She didn't want to be seen as the new agent that dragged in a ton of baggage with her.
On her third full day in her office, which was nearly organized at that point, Camille found herself doing that same old balancing act again. She already liked McCutcheon quite a bit and she could tell the feeling was mutual, so she hated telling lies. So she did her best to simply omit information as McCutcheon once again brought up the fact that Camille had grown up just an hour to the south.
"You got much family out there in Upping?" McCutcheon asked.
"Some. A father and a woman that wasn't really an aunt but might as well have been."
"Ah, the unofficial aunt," McCutcheon said. "Those are the best kind. You been out to visit them at all?"
"Not yet. But I did see the not-aunt a few weeks back. I think she was actually one of the reasons it was so easy for me to decide to relocate."
"You all moved in to your apartment?"
Camille grinned and nodded. "Yeah. It's pretty easy when you don't have that much stuff."
McCutcheon shrugged. "Enjoy it. I have no regrets about my twenties, but I can tell you it's going to go by fast. Especially here. We've all heard great things about you, Grace. Even aside from the Sir Richard bust. I'll make sure you stay busy. New Orleans and the surrounding areas, as I'm sure you know, is never going to disappoint."
"Yes, I know."
"Well, I'll leave you to your office set-up for now. Hopefully I'll have something worth your while sooner rather than later."
With McCutcheon gone, Camille sat on her new couch, a couch that took up nearly the entire back wall of her office. She thought of her "non-aunt" Deanna Lewiston. She wanted to go see her soon because she hadn’t even told Deanna that she was living in New Orleans.
But she could do that later. She knew where she had to go. When she'd spoken to Deanna a little over two weeks ago, Deanna had told her the news about her father. He was sick and no one knew what he was sick with because the stubborn bastard wouldn't go to the doctor.
She'd come back here with such ease and it had felt...well, maybe not right but something akin to right. It had felt that way despite the fact that her father was still in Upping.
She had to go see him. It was the last thing she wanted to do. She could far too easily recall the horrors he'd caused, the way he'd tore their family apart. The way she'd been terrified of him for most of her life. There were scars from her childhood she’d not yet fully recovered from, and her father was at the base of them—scars that had also pushed her mother and sister away. Her father…the pig pen…the mystery around what had pushed him to certain actions.
But he was sick, and she was here.
Camille looked at her watch. Four-thirty.
"Later," she said. "Maybe I'll have some beer. Maybe that'll make it tolerable."
Speaking it out loud served as an odd form of accountability. And though there was nothing stopping her from leaving right then and there, Camille sat on the couch a bit longer. She wasn't worried about summoning up the courage to face him.
No, she was more worried about how she'd react to the mere sight of him.
So she sat on the couch and waited, once again feeling her hometown grumbling from a distance like a bad storm that was pushing in her direction.
*
The one godsend Camille got was that her father no longer lived in the house where she’d grown up. When he'd gotten out of prison several years ago, he'd moved into a small one-bedroom house at the back end of Upping. It was tucked into a half-circle of a clearing that was surrounded by gloomy-looking trees to all sides.
Like most of the houses and mobile homes on this stretch of rural Louisiana, the place was a rental. Camille knew all of this because she'd done some digging from her new office in the days leading up to the visit. So when she pulled her new-to-her car into her father's driveway at six o' clock on the same day she and McCutcheon had talked about the importance of "non-aunts," she was ready.
The six pack of beer would hopefully help as well.
She parked behind an old Ford pickup, the R worn off of the logo on the tailgate. She wasn't sure how to feel about the fact that she was not nervous when she stepped up to the porch and knocked on the door. If anything, it felt natural. Deep down, it felt like something she should have done a long time ago.
Yet when she heard footfalls and the sound of the door opening, there was a slight pang of nerves. But by then, it was too late. By then, her father was standing in the doorway, looking out at her.
Carl Grace had changed drastically and from one simple glance at him she could tell that Deanna had been right. He was sick.
He was a stout man, with a wide frame and a belly that had grown wide. His hair was gray and unkempt. His eyes were a bit watery and his skin was pale. It wasn't just the fact that his hair was a lot thinner than it had been the last time Camille had seen him.
It was the look in his eyes. They looked like the windows of a house that had been broken into. When Camille looked at her father, she saw every horrible thing he'd ever done to her or her mother, or anyone else for that matter, in his eyes. She saw the coldness there, the self-centeredness. She saw the latent rage and fire that had once resided there. Even if those things were no longer present, they'd done their damage.
Those eyes seemed to glisten as he studied her. Three seconds went by before he gathered what was happening.
"Camille?" he said, his voice a whisper.
"Yeah," she replied, surprised at how calm she sounded. "It's me…it's Camille."
"My God…my baby girl…" His voice was even weaker than before.
But what came as the biggest shock of all was that she didn't feel anything. No anger or fear or sadness or relief. Instead, his voice and that last comment brought to mind something else he'd said in the past.
My baby girl. Why’d you have to be so good? Haven’t you heard of the slaughterhouse? Haven’t you seen the dead hogs?
He said nothing else after this. He looked at her and then quickly back behind him. He looked sad, maybe a little embarrassed. She could only imagine what he was living like out here, sick and alone in the middle of nowhere.
"You don't have to invite me in," she said.
He looked put-off by this comment, but he nodded and stepped aside. "No, no, come on in. It's just...I've been by myself for a very long time now and..."
"No maid service," Camille said, trying to keep the mood light. "I get it."
She followed him into the living room. There was a couch, a tattered armchair and a TV sitting on top of an old entertainment center. Carl Grace sat across from her in the armchair and when Camille looked at him, she saw a tear rolling down his cheek.
"How're you doing, Dad?" she asked, trying to sound casual.
"I'm doing fine.
"Fine? You look like hell, Dad. Deanna says you're sick. And looking at you, I'd say she's right."
"You've talked to Deanna?"
"Yes."
"Why…what are you doing here? I mean, I'm so glad to see you, but you're the last person I'd expect to see in Upping."
"I'm on a case in New Orleans," she lied.
"And you wanted to come by to see me?"
"Not originally, no. I won't lie about that." Amazed at how easy it was to speak to him, she added: "But when I knew you were sick, I figured I should."
"She shouldn't have told you."
"Why not?"
He lowered his eyes. "Because I'm dying, Camille. I'm dying, and it's not a pretty sight. I'm in a lot of pain right now and I don't want you to see me like this."
"Well, it was either like this or not at all. And how do you know you're dying? How do you know if you won't go to the doctor?"
"I did go to the doctor. I just didn't tell Deanna. I got the results last week. It's pancreatic cancer and it's pretty far along."
"Jesus, Dad. What are you going to do? Just stay here and suffer with it?"
"That was the plan."
A silence fell in around them. Camille took the time to look around the place beyond the living room. A small kitchen was joined to the living room, connected by a bar area. The sink was filled with dirty dishes.
"You gonna let those get warm or were they a peace offering?"
She noticed he was nodding to the beer she'd brought in. A six pack of Coors bottles. She took one out and tossed it to him; he caught it and uncapped it right away, like a true professional.
"They aren't a peace offering," Camille said. "They were just something to do. Something to fill the silence."
He took a long pull from his and sighed. "You must think it's stupid, me not ever seeking treatment for it. Right?"
"I do."
"What else did Deanna tell you? Did she tell you about your mother?"
"That she died all alone in a hotel room in Texas? Yeah."
"And if you—"
"You know what, Dad?" she said. "It was a big enough step for me to come see you at all. I don't know if I'm ready for small talk. Especially not if you're about to tell me you've chosen to suffer through this because you deserve it. Because of all you did in the past."
He laughed, but it was a sad sound. "Damn, you're good. That's exactly what I'm doing you know?"
She nodded. She wasn’t surprised at his admission of it, but she did find that she was upset about how he legitimately didn’t seem to care. And, more to the point, how much she discovered she did care.
"Can we just sit for now? I don't think I need to talk. I think I'm going to drink two of these beers and leave the rest for you. And then I'm going to go."
She saw the glint of sadness in his eyes and didn't feel at all ashamed that it brought her a bit of joy. "So you just came to confirm that I was dying? And then...what? You're just going to go?"
"Yes," she said, enjoying the freedom of it. "For now. But I'll be in town for a while. You'll see me again." She almost asked if there was anything he needed but bit back. She wasn't quite there yet.
Instead, she sat in silence and rather enjoyed it. She sat in silence in the presence of a man that was both oddly familiar and eerily strange at the same time. She drank and took the occasional glance at the man that had raised her and yet, somehow, had made her childhood a nightmare.
More than that, though, being around her father reminded her of Nanette—of a sister that had been missing for far too long. And even if Nanette was dead, Camille needed to know. It was a stark reminder of why she was really here, why she’d felt such a need to come back. It was a reminder that she knew would haunt her like a deranged ghost until she finally got to the bottom of it.
A ghost that was already tickling the back of her neck, asking what the hell was taking her so long.
- Writer
