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Her nod encouraged him to continue.
“They’re not about the shooting specifically, but there’s something I can’t finish, somewhere I can’t get to, and time is running out. Like that.”
“Failure dreams. They’re common.”
“Sure. My most frequent one is that I’m searching for my baseball glove. The umpire has already cried, ‘Play ball,’ everyone is waiting for me to take the field, and I can’t find my glove.
“But these recent dreams are different. They make me wonder if my retelling about the shooting has made it familiar by repetition. Am I recounting it by rote and overlooking a minor detail that could be huge, that could be the one thing that nails the shooter?”
“Like what?”
He gave her a grim smile. “I don’t know. That’s just it. I’ve always been a problem solver, able to work out a knot. I can’t work this one out, and it’s frustrating as hell because I want the son of a bitch to be punished to the fullest extent of the law. I want to punish him myself.Wrathfully.I think about it all the time.”
She looked at him with compassionate sadness. “Even if he is found and punished to the fullest extent, I’m afraid that day will always be a preoccupation for those of us who survived it. Like a brand, it’ll be there for the rest of our lives.”
“When I was still in recovery, the trauma surgeon came to check on me. He told me the same thing, in virtually those same words. It’ll always be with me.” He fiddled with the paper napkin beneath his mug. “I don’t know if I could do what you did.”
“What did I do?”
Now that he was getting to the heart of the matter, he wanted to make sure they wouldn’t be overheard. He looked around the bar. There was only a smattering of customers, but just then a pair of older men came in, laughing together. The bartender greeted them by name and began drawing two mugs of draft beer even before they were settled on their bar stools.
Calder took in the obvious friendship between the two men, their ease with each other, the bartender’s familiarity with his regulars. In that moment, Calder envied them. He’d almost forgotten what it felt like not to be wallowing—Shauna’s angry but accurate word—in the suffocating aftermath of the shooting. Like quicksand, there was no escaping it, and the harder he fought it, the deeper he sank.
Elle was leaning toward him in anticipation of what he’d been about to say. She was focused directly on him as though completely unaware of their surroundings, as though he were the only person in the world.
But he didn’t want to be the only person in the world. He wanted her to be there with him.
Unsettled by a sudden but undeniable yearning, he angled back slightly and cleared his throat. “What did you do?” he said, repeating her question. “You opened up to the group in a way that I never could.”
“At what point did you come in?”
“You were saying that Charlie was the love of your life.”
“True. I went to a lot of trouble to get him.”
Calder was unsure how he should respond, or if he should at all. But he wanted to know. “Shauna covered Charlie’s funeral for channel seven. In passing, she mentioned to me that you’re single.”
“Divorced.”
Shauna had also told him that the boy’s father wasn’t in the picture. “Has your ex been around to help you through this? As Charlie’s dad, you’d think—”
“Charlie wasn’t his.”
“Oh. Sorry. I see.”
“No, I don’t think you do.” He sensed that her smile was at his expense. “I was a couple of years past thirty. I wanted a baby. Jeff, my ex, wanted to wait, wanted to get better established in his job first, wanted to be able to buy a larger house, a bigger car.” She took a breath. “But what he wanted most was a much younger personal trainer at his fitness club.”
He opened his mouth. She held out her hand. “No, don’t say anything. It’s too cliché. He got the girl, I got an express-lane divorce, then immediately began taking the steps necessary to conceive Charlie.”
He was curious, but it would be rude to ask, so he arched an eyebrow.
She laughed at the implied question. “I went through dozens of men. Hundreds maybe. Night after night… I snuggled up with a catalog of sperm donors.”
“Oh,” he said with chagrin.
“See? I knew it wasn’t what you were thinking. Charlie’s conception was purely clinical.”
“Damn. We were just getting to the good part.”
