CHAPTER 15
My face still hurts when I wake up—a dull residual pain that trails along my cheekbone to my nose. In the shower, I make the water as hot as I can endure and spend a good five minutes sniffing steam into my nose, huffing it out, dislodging the dried blood caked to the insides of my nostrils. I then lift my face to the spray, the hot water stinging my skin.
When I think about last night, a tremor grips my legs so violently that I have to lean against the shower wall for support. It’s hard to believe I was that foolish, that quick to leap into danger. The man in the park could have been armed. I could have been stabbed, shot, killed. All things considered, I’m lucky I got away with a mere backhand to the face.
Out of the shower, I swipe my hand over the bathroom mirror, making a clear streak across the fogged surface. The reflection staring back at me has the faintest of bruises on her cheek, barely noticeable. Yet it’s tender to the touch. A little pressure from my fingertips is enough to make we wince.
The new pain along my cheek has awakened older wounds. Although the stab wounds I received at Pine Cottage didn’t cause any lasting damage, they did leave scars. Today they’re throbbing—the first time I’ve felt them in years. I arch my back slightly until the scar on my stomach is framed in the mirror. A milk-white line against my steam-reddened skin. I then lean forward, looking close at the two scars sitting an inch apart just below my shoulder. One is a vertical line. The other’s slightly diagonal. Had the knife been bigger, the two would have intersected.
By the time I’m dried off and dressed, everything has subsided into a slight ache. Annoying, yes, but nothing I can’t handle.
In the kitchen, I take my pre-Coop Xanax and grape soda, waiting for Sam to emerge from her room. She does a few minutes later, looking like a completely different person. Her hair is swept behind her ears, giving full view of a face that’s been gently kissed with makeup. The eyeliner has been applied with a lighter hand, and instead of ruby red, her lips are touched with a peachy-pink gloss. Forgoing her usual black, she’s dressed in dark jeans, blue flats and the very same blouse she had taken from Saks the day before. The gold earrings I stole dangle from her ears.
“Wow,” I say.
“I clean up nicely, don’t I?”
“I’ll say.”
“I wanted to make a good impression.”
While walking to the cafe, we catch a few looks from passersby, although it’s impossible to know whether they’re because of Jonah Thompson’s article or Sam’s new look. Probably the latter. Few eyes, I notice, glance my way, and when they do it feels like they’re comparing me with Sam.
Even Coop does it when we arrive at the cafe and pass his usual spot by the window. Through the glass, I see a brief nod for me and an appraising look directed at Sam. A pinprick of irritation forms on the back of my neck.
Coop stands when we enter. Unlike our last meeting, he’s dressed to blend in with the cafe’s upper-class crowd. Today he wears khakis and a black polo shirt. It looks good on him, the short sleeves exposing his taut biceps, the veins popping just beneath his skin.
“You must be Samantha,” he says.
He’s slow with the handshake. Awkward. Uncertain. It’s up to Sam to complete the gesture, reaching across the table to grasp his open palm.
“And you’re Officer Cooper,” she says.
“Coop,” he says quickly. “Everyone calls me Coop.”
“And everyone calls me Sam.”
“Great,” I say, forcing a smile as we take our seats. “We’re all acquainted.”
Two mugs sit on the table in front of Coop. His coffee and my tea. Looking at them, he says, “I wanted to order something for you, Sam, but I didn’t know what you prefer.”
“Coffee,” Sam says. “And I can get it. You two catch up. Or whatever.”
She edges around tables to the counter in the back of the cafe. One of them is occupied by a bearded guy wearing a backwards baseball cap. A writer, judging from the laptop in front of him. Elsewhere on the table are a leather satchel, an iPhone, and a shiny Montblanc pen sitting atop a yellow legal pad. He looks at Sam as she passes, impressed. Sam smiles at him, wiggling her fingers in a flirtatious wave.
“So that’s Samantha Boyd,” Coop says.
“In the flesh.” I gaze at him over the table, watching him watch Sam on the other side of the cafe. “Is something wrong?”
“I’m just shocked is all,” he says. “I never expected her to show up like this. It’s kind of like seeing a ghost.”
“I was surprised, too.”
“She’s not what I was expecting.”
“What were you expecting?”
“Someone rougher, I guess. She looked different in that yearbook photo, don’t you think?”
I could tell Coop that Sam is very different, that she’s smoothed down her rough edges to impress him for my sake. I stay silent.
“I did some reading up about The Nightlight Inn last night,” Coop says. “I can’t imagine what she’s been through.”
“She’s had a hard life,” I say.
“How are the two of you getting along?”
“Great. She and Jeff don’t exactly see eye to eye.”
Coop allows a half-smile. “I can’t say that surprises me.”
“Jeff’s the one you should be getting to know. This arrangement with Sam is only temporary. Like it or not, Jeff’s permanent.”
I don’t know why I say it. It slips out, unplanned. And just like that, Coop’s fraction of a smile vanishes.
“But thank you for coming,” I say, guilt softening my tone. “It was nice of you to suggest it, even though I’m starting to feel like a burden.”
“You’re not a burden, Quincy. You’ve never been one and you’ll never be one.”
Coop stares at me with those eyes of his. I run a finger over my bruised face, wondering if he’s somehow noticed that imperceptible line of pink along my cheekbone. Part of me hopes he’ll ask about it. It will allow me to use the lie I concocted to explain it away. Oh, that? I bumped into a doorway. I have trouble hiding my disappointment when he looks over my shoulder, watching Sam make her way back to us with a steaming mug in her hands. When she passes the writer again, she accidentally bumps the table, coffee mug tilting precariously.
“I’m so sorry!” she yelps.
The man looks up, smiling. “No problem.”
“Nice laptop,” she says.
Soon she’s at our table again, sitting beside me, giving Coop the once-over before telling him, “I thought you’d look different.”
“Good different or bad different?” Coop asks.
“Ugly different. And clearly you’re not.”
“So you knew who I was before today?”
“Of course,” Sam says. “Just like you knew who I was. That’s the power of the Internet. No one has secrets anymore.”
“Is that why you went into hiding?”
“Mostly,” Sam says. “But now I’m back among the living.”
“You certainly are.” There’s an edge of disbelief in Coop’s voice, as if he’s not buying the good-girl act Sam’s pushing so hard. He leans back, tilts his head, sizes her up the same way she did him. “Why’d you decide to return?”
“After I heard about what happened to Lisa, I thought I could possibly help Quincy,” Sam says, adding, “If she needed help.”
“Quincy doesn’t need help.” Coop says it like I’m not sitting directly across from him. Like I’m invisible. “She’s strong like that.”
“But I didn’t know that,” Sam says. “Which is why I’m here.”
“Are you going to stay long?”
Sam gives a blithe shrug. “Maybe. It’s too soon to tell.”
I take a sip of tea. It’s too hot, the liquid burning my tongue. But I keep drinking in the hope the pain will erase the spot of annoyance that’s once again found its way onto the back of my neck. This time it’s the size of a thumbprint, pressing into my skin.
“Sam changed her name,” I say. “That’s why no one’s been able to locate her.”
“Really?” Coop’s features rise in surprise. I’m expecting a lecture similar to the one he gave me when I suggested changing my name. Instead, he says, “I’m not going to ask you where you were or what name you were living under. I hope that, in time, you’ll trust me enough to tell me that on your own. All I ask is that you contact your family and let them know.”
“My family is one of the reasons I disappeared,” Sam says, growing quiet. “It wasn’t exactly the best environment even before The Nightlight Inn. It just got worse after. I love them and all, but some families aren’t meant to be around each other.”
“I could contact them for you,” Coop suggests. “Just to tell them you’re safe.”
“I couldn’t ask you to do that.”
Coop shrugs. “You didn’t. I offered.”
“Spoken like a true public servant,” Sam says. “Were you always a cop?”
“Not always. Before that I was in the military. Marines.”
“You see any action?”
“Some.” Coop looks out the window, fixing those baby blues on the outside world to avoid eye contact. “Afghanistan.”
“Shit,” Sam says. “You must have seen some messed up stuff.”
“I did. But I don’t like to talk about it.”
“Well,” Sam says, “you and Quincy certainly have that in common.”
Coop turns away from the window, facing not Sam, but me. Again, there’s something unreadable in his expression. He looks suddenly, terribly sad.
“People deal with trauma in their own ways,” he says.
“And how do you deal with yours?” Sam asks.
“I fish,” Coop says. “And hunt. And hike. You know, typical Pennsylvania boy stuff.”
“Does it help?”
“Mostly.”
“Maybe I should try it,” Sam says.
“I’d be happy to take you and Quincy fishing sometime, if you’d like.”
“Quincy’s right. You really are the best.”
Sam reaches across the table and squeezes Coop’s hand. He doesn’t pull away. My irritation grows. Tension fills my shoulders and pokes through the soft cushion of Xanax. I want to take a second pill. I worry that I’ve now become the kind of woman who needs to take a second pill.
“I have to go to the ladies room,” I say, grabbing my purse off the table. “Join me, Sam?”
“Sure.” Sam gives Coop a wink. “Girls. We’re so predictable, right?”
On our way to the back of the cafe, she gives another wave to the writer at the table. He waves back. Sam and I then cram ourselves into a bathroom built to accommodate only one person. We stand in front of the dust-mottled mirror, shoulders touching.
“How am I doing?” Sam says as she checks her makeup.
“The question is what are you doing?”
“Being friendly. Isn’t that what you wanted?”
“It is—”
“Then what’s the problem?”
“Just tone it down a little,” I say. “If you come on too strong, Coop will know it’s an act.”
“Would that be a problem if he does?”
“It could make things awkward.”
“I don’t mind awkward,” Sam says.
I start to root through my purse, looking for any stray Xanax that might be resting inside. “Coop does.”
”Oh,” Sam says, the word a pool of innuendo. “So things have gotten awkward between you two.”
“He’s a friend,” I say.
“Right. A friend.”
“He is.”
At the bottom of my purse, I find a few loose sticks of gum and a lone, fuzz-covered Mentos. No Xanax. I snap it shut.
“I’m not arguing,” Sam says.
“No, you’re suggesting.”
“Me?” Sam says, faux offended. “I’m in no way suggesting that you’re getting it on with that hot cop.”
“I think you just did.”
“All I’m saying is that he’s hot.”
“I never noticed.”
Sam pulls out a tube of gloss and gives one quick swipe to both her bottom and top lips. “I call bullshit on that one, babe. It’s kind of hard not to notice.”
“Seriously, I never have. He saved my life. When someone does that, you tend not to think of them in that way.”
“Guys do. They pretend they don’t, but they totally do.”
Sam’s taken on a wiser, worldier tone. The older sister giving sex advice. I wonder what kind of men she dates. Older guys, probably. Bikers with thick chests and thicker guts, their beards salted with gray. Or maybe she likes them younger. Pale, wiry men so inexperienced they’re grateful for even the most disinterested of handjobs.
“If he did,” I say, “Coop’s too much of a gentleman to make a big deal out of it.”
“Gentleman?” Sam says. “He’s a cop. From my experience, they fuck like jackhammers.”
I say nothing, knowing how she’s only looking for my disapproval, seeking a chance to chide me for being such a prude. Janelle did it all the time.
“I’m joking,” she says. “Lighten up.”
That was another of Janelle’s traits. To backtrack once she knew she’d gone too far, trying to shrug everything off as a joke. Today, Sam does her one better.
“I’m sorry, Quinn. I’ll tone it down. Really.” Her hand plunges into her pocket. “By the way, I thought you might like this. Something for your goodie drawer.”
She pulls out a Montblanc pen as sleek and shiny as a silver bullet and presses it into my hand. It once belonged to the writer in the cafe. Now it belongs to us. Another one of our shared secrets.