"Go home."
"Yes, Chief."
"To the cabin."
I blink.
"Yes, Chief."
"I'll see you Monday."
She turns. She walks up the steps. Lena meets her on the second step. Lena puts a hand on her face. Val lets the hand stay. Lena kisses her lightly. Lena says something I cannot hear and Val nods, and Lena takes the folder out of Val's hand, and they go in.
I don’t do a lot of work directly with Lena, but I know she is involved in everything now. I know Val confides in her and Lena holds Val and Val has become stronger since having Lena.
The door closes.
The porch light goes off.
I sit with my hands on the wheel.
Val told me to go to the cabin.
Val has never told me to go to the cabin. Val has told me to go to the apartment, to the station, to Spokane, to a fire on Fourth Street, to an interview in Pittsburgh in 2009, and to a bar in Reno after a funeral in 2014. Val has never said the wordcabinto me as a destination. The cabin has been the place she does not name. The cabin has been the thing I drive to when I have not been told where to drive, which is the agreement we have had for fourteen years.
She has named it.
She has named it because she knows. She must know about Evangeline.
I sit with the truth of that for a count of ten.
Then I put the truck in reverse, and I back out of the drive, and I drive north.
---
Evangeline is on the porch when I come up the drive.
She is in my flannel and my sweats and she is barefoot still. She is sitting on the top step with a mug in both hands and a book open on her knee. The book is one of the biographies from the third shelf. She closes it when she sees the truck. She stands.
She is so beautiful with her golden hair loose around her shoulders. She takes my breath away every time I look at her.
I park.
I get out.
She walks down the porch steps to me.
She is looking at my face the way she looked at my face last night across the table, which is the way she looks at my face when she is deciding what kind of evening I am going to have.She stops in front of me. She puts her hand on the front of my jacket.
"Bad day?”
"Long." I sigh.
She does not ask. She has said she will not ask and she has not asked. She lifts her hand from my jacket and she puts it on my jaw, and she runs her thumb under my eye where the day is, and she lets her hand drop. She kisses me, lightly and tenderly.
"Take me out," she says.
I look at her.
