When Jodie got the phone call from her boss, she was sitting with Graham on the porch he had built onto the back of his house. She held a glass of white wine with the golden sparkles floating to the surface caught by the lowering sun. Graham’s steaming coffee sat on a small table between them. Off the back of the porch, the ground had been levelled and flagstone paths meandered to Graham’s two sheds. The flagstones were bordered by wildflowers. Purple, yellow, white and red petals swayed in the intermittent breezes. Beautiful. Even with the bees that came along with all the flowers. The flowers smelled of summer and the sunlight made them glow. A hot summer evening, Jodie was wearing shorts, a T-shirt and running shoes. Graham wore jeans, a long sleeve shirt and well-worn work-boots. She had never seen him wear anything else. He didn’t wear the same clothes day in and day out but his style remained the same. She wondered if he had other scars on him and if that’s what he was hiding under the long-sleeves and jeans.
She said, “This is beautiful, Graham. Did I tell you that already? I feel like I told you that already.”
“How many glasses of wine have you had?”
“This is my second and my last. I have to make my way through the woods to my car and then drive home because you live out in the middle of nowhere.”
Graham grunted, picked up his coffee and sipped at it.
“How can you drink hot coffee on a day like this?”
“Like this…” He took another sip and smiled.
She smiled back. At first, his smile bothered her. The missing eye, puckered skin, and broken muscles underneath made a ghastly picture. Now she was used to it. And he didn’t smile often so when he did she knew it was genuine. And those are the best smiles, aren’t they? The real ones?
The reason Jodie had instigated the relationship with Graham because she had been curious. How did he find little Francine? He never admitted to her that he found her but she knew it was him. And he knew she knew. It was a weird little game they played, circling around the topic and never directly mentioning it. She also wanted to know more about him because he was interesting. Living out here, effectively alone, generating his own power, finding a well and using it as a water source and growing his own food with the use of an ingenious system of hydroponics. He wanted to be alone and although she suspected it had something to do with his scars, externally and internally, she didn’t really know. She thought she should feel bad for ruining his self-imposed isolation. She didn’t. She sensed his loneliness the first time she met him. A standoffish approach that made her think he was the type to push someone away because he feared closeness. All that and the fact that he had found Francine when a whole town and a slew of cops couldn’t, she just had to get to know him. And she was glad she had pushed it. She considered him a good friend and she hoped he saw her the same way. They discussed books over coffee or dinner. Graham made a point of taking her through his woods and showing her the beauty of it, the solitude of it and the wonderful deep emeralds of the leaves when the sun glinted off them just right. He spoke in his quiet way and when he listened, she knew he heard her. He wouldn’t mm-hmm her and glance at the screen of his cell phone. He didn’t even carry one which was both strange and kind of cool. She spoke to him about her work and how hard it had been for her, a woman and a minority, to get the position she had. In policing, a lot of officers were men. And she was directing them during high profile investigations. They wanted her job and because of that, she felt like she had a target in the centre of her back ever since she had earned her position. She sometimes pictured a group of white guys in a room, rubbing their hands together, smiling while waiting for her to screw up. She hadn’t. Not yet. In fact, her clearance rate outshone anyone on the force. There were over six thousand officers in the Ontario Provincial Police, so that was saying a lot. Her bosses relied on her. They counted on her to crack the tough cases. And their reliance on her was merited by her performance. She knew if she kept succeeding, she could move right up the ranks. That was an aspiration she only felt comfortable sharing with Graham.
For his part, he didn’t share much. But he listened to her and wasn’t that like sharing? It was a gift she had never appreciated or knew of until she had experienced it. He never ate meat and when she asked him why, he shrugged and said, “I don’t like it.” He didn’t say it was an ethical thing or it was too expensive. He said he didn’t like it and that was explanation enough for him. The dinner fare was strange because she didn’t expect a man in the woods to not eat meat. His vegetarian food was creative and he did make his own bread so she was never dissatisfied or went home hungry after dinner at his home. He didn’t drink either except she thought that had something to do with the frequent headaches he got. She had to leave on more than one occasion, at his request, when a headache would weaken his knees and cause a steady stream of tears to leak from his one eye. He would down a few pills and go lie in the complete darkness of his room until the pain passed.
She knew he hated crowds because they made him uncomfortable. Talking about it, she saw the way he drew his shoulders up to his ears that even discussing it made him anxious. She didn’t know why that was because he didn’t explain. And, she was happy he had let her into his life and she could tell by a frown or hard stare from Graham that he didn’t want her to push. He wanted her to leave it alone. And she did and because of this, he let her into his life a little more each time. He showed her how he maintained living off the grid and the work it took. He was proud of his hydroponics system. He swelled like a proud father when his fingers stroked the leaves of a ripening vegetable. It kept him busy every day and she knew that was one reason why he lived that way, because he needed to be busy. Sometimes, when they were sitting like they were now, Graham’s eye would tighten and she could tell he was gazing inward and whatever he was seeing made him sad. She would watch him shake his head, like a dog waking from a bad dream in which the rabbit got away, to get rid of the thought. Jodie believed he kept busy to keep such thoughts away. Whatever flashed across the interior screen of his mind hurt him. She could tell by the way he would press a palm into his empty socket and clench his teeth. He was trying not to cry. The struggle was painful to watch. When those moments happened she pretended not to see. She would stare off into space or pick up a book nearby and read the back of it and when out of the corner of her eye she noticed he had regained himself, she would wait some more and then pat his forearm.
Every once in awhile, she would think back to Francine. She really wanted to know how he had found her. It was killing her to know and she would only toy with considering asking him about it when she thought he was in a good mood. No. Not good. She thought the best moment to ask him would be when she judged Graham to be in a great mood. Sitting with him on the porch she judged him to be in a great mood because his normal scowl wasn’t as pronounced. He almost wore a countenance of contentment. If she wanted to ask, and she did, now would be the ideal time to ask. Considering it made her heart beat faster. A light coating of sweat appeared on her upper lip. She feared this could potentially be a breach of their friendship etiquette. She thought about asking in a roundabout way like, “That guy who found Francine, I wonder why he didn’t come forward. The guy is a hero, don’t you think?” She imagined Graham rotating his eye to her, smile, shake his head at her and return to sipping his coffee. He was always drinking coffee. To ask him straight out, she worried Graham might shut down and then shut her out. She didn’t want to lose him as a friend. They were comfortable with each other and she enjoyed his company. Her regular visits at his request indicated he enjoyed her company, too. She should just ask. Get it all out of the way and into the open. It’s not like he’d kick her out. At this point, he’d either tell her to mind her own business or he might actually tell her how he had found Francine. She was mulling over how best to ask him when her phone rang. She put her wine glass down and struggled to get it out of the front pocket of her shorts. The screen read a private number. Her work always called her on a private number. She sighed and answered it.
“Hello?” She straightened in her chair and leaned forward. Graham could hear a deep voice from her phone. It was too faint to hear the words so what he heard of the conversation was from her end. Jodie said, “Where is that?” Pause. “How far is that?” More deep voice responses. “So I should probably pack for a few days?”“A week? I would hope we find her before then.” Her eyes rolled over to Graham and then away. “You have any drones up that way?” “Good.” “And search teams?”“Perfect. I’ll head up there tonight, then. Can you book me a place to stay and then send it to my phone?” “Great. Thanks.” “Oh, and who do I report to?” “Me? I’m running the show?” “Hey, thanks. Really. I appreciate it.” “Yup. I’ll be on my way soon. I should be there in a few hours or so. Tonight for sure.” “Thanks again.” She hung up the phone and leaned back in her chair. She reached for her wine but stopped halfway and left it on the table. She wouldn’t be needing it.
“That was my work. They need me to head up north to help out with a missing teenager. They’re putting me in charge. I’m running it.”
“That’s good, right?”
She smiled and patted Graham’s arm. “Oh yeah. This is good. Real good. Normally, I work under someone you know? Normally, the people I worked under would defer to me to make all the decisions and if things go well, they take the credit and if it goes bad, they can point their fingers at me. I haven’t had anything go bad yet. So I’m getting a shot. This is my investigation. I’m the lead investigator and the case manager. It’s all on me.”
“Isn’t that what you wanted?”
Her smile faded. She inhaled and rolled her shoulders, “Yeah. It shows they believe in me. And that’s always a good thing. It’s been so hard to earn something that is freely given to the others, mostly men, and now that I’ve got their belief, I need to keep it. The next promotional opportunity should go well for me and then from there, who knows?”
“Why are you so nervous then?”
“Because of two things. One: this investigation has to go well in order for that to happen and ‘well’ means getting the girl back alive and finding the bad guy. Two: I shouldn’t give a shit about my career and be focused on getting the girl back because that’s what matters in the end, right?”
“I think that’s the only thing that matters. But you’re human and it’s natural to think about what could be. Besides, you’ve earned the right to be the one who brings the girl home and you should be proud of that because you earned it on merit. It means with you out there investigating, she has the best chance of being found. Don’t let that distract you from your goal though. Bring the girl home to her family. And I’ll see you in a week or so.”
She stood, squeezed his hand and said, “Yes. In a week or so.”
She turned to leave and then paused, peering down at Graham. She opened her mouth to say something and then closed it. She offered a small smile and walked away.
Graham let out a breath. The hairs on his body tingled. A line of sweat slid down from his hairline and ran into his puckered eyelid. When she paused there, a fear settled on Graham’s chest. A cold stone pressing down. He thought she was going to ask him something he would have to refuse and it scared him. He didn’t want Jodie to dislike him. After all this time convincing himself he needed no one and was more comfortable with no one around, he realized he had been wrong. He had wanted a friend and had convinced himself that he hadn’t. Because it was easier to be alone. It was easier to not care. But now he had Jodie as his friend. And Jodie was an ideal friend. He didn’t get the feelings of rage around her like he had with so many other people. When he decided to be alone, it had been for those reasons. In his anger, he was dangerous to everyone. He wanted to be free of the spontaneous fury and the skull cracking headaches. He did like his solitude and especially did not like the horrified stares at his scars, misshapen jaw, his missing eye and hearing the whispers at his back. Jodie was different. She never flinched looking at him and spoke to him directly. Even his mom turned her head talking to him sometimes because staring at his injuries was too much. Almost like looking into the sun. If the sun were a horrible scarred white guy better suited to being on the cover of a horror magazine. He liked having Jodie around. He liked feeling valued and…human. So when she paused before leaving he was scared. He thought she was going to ask him to come with her. He thought she would want him to help her find the girl. He couldn’t do that and was afraid he would have to refuse her. Thinking about it, he clenched his jaw. The pain. The crowds. The people. He shivered in the hot sun.