What I Shouldn’t Want

Chapter 4

CALEB’S POV

Nora left for her shift at ten past nine. She'd showered, put on her scrubs, and tied her hair back so tight it pulled at her eyebrows. She said goodbye to me at the door like I was a neighbor who'd borrowed a ladder.

"Lock up when you go," she said.

"You're not coming back tonight?"

"I'm working a double. Then I'm going to sleep at my place." She didn't look at me. "It's better."

"Okay."

"It is better, Caleb."

"I said okay."

She stood there with her keys in her hand. For a second I thought she'd say something else. Then her jaw set and she went out, and I watched her truck back down the gravel until the trees swallowed it.

I did the dishes that were already clean. I swept a floor that didn't need it. Around eleven I went out to the porch with a toolbox, because the third step had been loose since I was fifteen and it was something I could actually fix.

I was lying on my back under the steps, trying to figure out why the stringer had split, when I heard another car.

This one was fast. It came up the drive too hard, spitting gravel, and stopped with a squeal of brakes. A door slammed. Boots hit the porch above me, and I felt the loose step shudder.

"Nora! Open the damn door. I know you're in there."

I closed my eyes. Dana.

I slid out from under the porch, and she was standing at the top of the steps with her fist raised to pound on the wood. She was small, maybe five-two, with cropped dark hair and a leather jacket two sizes too big, and she was already glaring at me like I owed her money.

"Oh," she said. "It's you."

"Hi, Dana."

"Where's Nora?"

"Work. She left two hours ago."

"Her phone's going straight to voicemail."

"She's probably got it in her locker."

"She never has it in her locker." Dana came down the steps and stopped in front of me with her arms crossed. She had to tilt her head back to look at me, and it didn't make her any less intimidating. "She texts me back in under ten minutes. Always. Since the funeral she's answered every message I've sent. Last night she goes dark. This morning, nothing. Then Marianne calls me at eight-thirty and says Nora seemed tired. So I'm here."

"Marianne called you?"

"Marianne calls me when she can't ask her own questions." She narrowed her eyes. "Why were you here?"

"She called me. She didn't want to be alone."

"She called you."

"Yeah."

"Of everyone she could've called." Dana looked me up and down. I was shirtless, because I'd pulled it off in the heat, and my jeans had sawdust on them. I grabbed my T-shirt off the railing and put it on, and I could feel her watching me do it. "You've been home, what, three weeks? And she calls you, in the middle of the night, out at the lake."

"We're family."

"Mm-hm."

"Dana. What do you want me to say?"

"I want you to tell me she's okay."

That caught me off guard. Her voice cracked on the last word, just barely. I looked at her properly then and saw what I'd missed. She had dark circles under her eyes, and her jacket was zipped wrong. She'd been scared. She'd driven out here scared.

"She's okay," I said. "She was drunk and sad. We both were. We talked, and she went to bed. That's it."

Which was true, if you stopped halfway through the night.

Dana held my eyes for a long moment, and I made myself hold hers. I'd done this under worse conditions, in worse places. I had lied to men with guns. I'd never found it harder than this.

"Okay," she said finally. She let out a breath and pushed her hand through her hair. "Okay. Sorry. I'm being a bitch."

"You're being a friend."

"That's the same thing, most days." She sat down heavily on the porch steps, the good ones, and patted the wood beside her. "Sit. I need to b***h for a minute and you're the only one here."

I sat. She pulled a pack of gum out of her pocket, offered me a stick, and I took it. We chewed in silence for a bit and watched the lake.

"I'm worried about her," Dana said.

"I know."

"No, you don't. You haven't been here." It wasn't an accusation, just a fact, and it landed anyway. "She doesn't sleep. She works every double they'll give her. She goes home and sits in the kitchen and doesn't turn the lights on. I found her like that last month. Two in the afternoon, curtains shut, sitting there in her scrubs with a glass of water she hadn't touched. She said she was thinking."

My chest hurt. "She told me she hasn't cleaned out his closet."

"She hasn't. She won't let me near it." Dana snorted. "I offered to do it for her. She looked at me like I'd suggested burning his body. Eight months, Caleb. She still has his toothbrush."

I didn't say anything.

"And she's angry. She won't admit it, but she is. She'll never say it out loud because he was a saint, right? Daniel Brooks. Everyone's favorite person on earth. But she's pissed that he left her, and she's drowning in guilt about being pissed, and it's eating her alive."

"Yeah," I said quietly. "I know."

Dana turned and studied me. "You do. Don't you."

"I was angry too."

"At him?"

"At myself, mostly. I missed the funeral. I wasn't here."

"I know. She told me." Dana's face softened a little. "She didn't hold it against you. You know that, right? She understood."

"I know she did. That doesn't help."

"No. It never does." She was quiet for a moment, picking at the zipper on her jacket. "Look, I'm gonna say this once. I like you. I always did. You were the quiet one at the wedding, standing there looking like somebody had run over your dog. I thought, that guy's got a story."

I stopped chewing.

"So I'm saying this because I like you," she said. "Be careful with her."

"I would never hurt her."

"I know you wouldn't want to. That's not what I mean." She looked at me with those sharp dark eyes. "She's in a place where she'll grab on to anything that makes her feel less like she's dying. Anything. A bottle, a stranger, the wrong person at the wrong time. I'm not saying that's you. I'm saying if you're going to be around, be the right kind of around. Support, not a... a complication."

The word hung there. I kept my face still. My heart was doing something that felt like a fist against a door.

"Okay," I said.

"Okay?"

"I hear you."

"Good." She slapped her knees and stood up. "Because if somebody takes advantage of her right now, I will end them, and I don't care if it's you. I'll put you in the lake and tell everyone you drowned fixing the dock."

"I believe you."

"You should." She cracked a grin, and it was so familiar, so close to Nora's dry humor, that something twisted in my gut. "I'm going to go bother her at the hospice. Tell her I came by if she checks in."

"I will."

"And fix that step. I almost went through it."

She walked back to her car, got in, and sat there for a moment with her hands on the wheel. Then she rolled down the window and called over, "Hey, Caleb."

"Yeah?"

"You have a hickey."

I froze.

She laughed out loud, a real, delighted bark. "Kidding. Jesus, your face. Relax. I'm kidding."

The car pulled away. I sat on the step and watched it go, my hand halfway to my neck, my pulse pounding in my ears.

It took me a long time to stand up.

When I finally went inside to get my phone, there was a text from an unknown number. Local area code.

“Heard you're back in town. We should talk. About Daniel. — T”

I read it three times. I didn't know any T. But there was only one person from that part of Nora's life I could think of, and I felt my whole body go cold.

I set the phone face down on the counter.

I didn't reply.