Page 9 of Call Off the Dark

Chapter Six

Ten years, seven months, and eight days ago

Once upon a time, Helen met Tyler.

She had been working at the Seattle marketing firm for eight months, and one rainy March morning, she entered the lobby of the high-rise building downtown just as someone disappeared into the elevator. It was already a few minutes past eight o’clock, so as Helen closed her umbrella, she called out, “Please hold the elevator!”

A hand shot out to prevent the door from closing as she hurried across the lobby. She stepped into the elevator, and the young man said, “What floor?”

She said, “Seven,” at the same moment she saw his blue eyes. He pushed the button for floor seven and she saw that the floor-four button was already lit up. He gave her a small smile, one that would be best described as polite, but something glistened in his eyes that made her feel like she might have just stepped inside the opening pages of a story she needed to read. His sports jacket and dark-wash jeans effortlessly epitomized business casual, and she was glad she’d put on her favorite pencil skirt that morning. He had speckles of rain all over his face, and there was something so disarming about him that Helen couldn’t help but say, “You have rain on your face.”

He paused briefly, as if slightly surprised by her comment, and then said, “Yeah, I put that on this morning. Not a good look?”

“No, it’s good,” she said. “You could bottle it and sell it. Rain serum.”

“Rain serum?”

“Yeah, there’d be an amazing profit margin.”

He nodded slowly. “I like the way you think.” He didn’t wipe the rain from his face.

She tried not to laugh and watched him try not to laugh too, and it was that implicit, shared effort that made the air between them feel charged.

The man’s hair was a light sandy color, and from the way it was starting to curl near his ears, Helen could tell a natural wave was hiding in there. It was probably only days away from needing a trim, days away from turning wild, and she had the sudden inexplicable urge to put her hands in it.

The elevator dinged and stopped. Floor four. Their exchange had been so fast, and in a moment, he’d be gone. Except when the elevator doors opened, the man didn’t move.

“Is this your floor?” she asked.

He hesitated before saying, “Yeah.” He didn’t want to part ways either.

So she said, “It’s my floor too.” It no longer mattered to her that it was a few minutes past eight.

The man turned to her with a slow, cool smile, and then they stepped onto the fourth floor together. She had no idea what company even took up this floor, but the wall behind the receptionist said Coleman Geyer. Below the simple black block letters, an impressive abstract iron sculpture took up half the wall that indicated: We are corporate and solid but also innovative and creative!

“Are you newly employed here?” the man asked, playing along.

“No, I’m here to see . . . Daphne.”

“Ah, Daphne. I can take you to her.”

It all felt so easy that Helen suddenly didn’t trust any of it, but she still liked it nonetheless.

The man wiped the rain from his face and said, “Follow me,” and every sleeping thing inside of her came alive.

He led her through a maze of office cubicles as he pretended to search for Daphne. He moved with the grace of an athlete, tall and lean and easy. He said things like “Right, I guess this isn’t her desk anymore,” and “I forgot, she switched out of this team,” and Helen felt amazed by this man who played so easily. So much so, she started to feel breathless and nervous, because she hadn’t had this much fun since she’d graduated from college the previous June and she wanted to hold on to it, whatever it was.

They finally ended up alone in the staff kitchen, where he said, “I’m sorry. Daphne doesn’t seem to be here today, but can I interest you in some food from a refrigerator that hasn’t been cleaned in five years because it’s community property?”

He opened a refrigerator that was so crammed with brown paper bags and takeout food boxes that two of the bags plopped to the floor. It was even worse than the refrigerator on the seventh floor, and Helen started laughing much harder than the moment called for. Her oversized reaction made her feel transparent, and as her laughter died down, she felt the heat in her cheeks.

Quietly, she said, “Do you do this kind of thing often?”

“Do I often lead a woman whose name I don’t know around the entire floor of the company I work for while we pretend to look for someone that we both know doesn’t exist?” He shook his head. “Definitely not.”

“Helen.”

“Tyler.”