“I hate shopping,” I said.
“I know. You hate everything that is at all girly,” Kami said. “But thanks for coming out anyway.”
“What are we looking for again?” I asked.
“I need a few more things for my personal kitchen, and I want a new outfit.”
“Two very random things that’ll require multiple stops,” I said.
“Yep. I want plenty of time to talk with you and pick your brain about your next move.”
“My next move?”
“Yeah. You know, finding another job. Working for me. Doing your painting. Do you even remember the past forty-eight hours?”
I made a face. “I don’t want to. Does that count?”
“Uh oh. You meddled again, didn’t you?”
“I didn’t meddle. I’m not a meddler.”
“Paige, you’re the queen of meddlers. If the meddlers of the world had a ruthless leader, it would be you.”
I made an offended sound. “I didn’t meddle. I got answers.”
“What do you mean?”
I sighed as we walked into the kitchenware store, and I knew I was about to lose Kami. Her eyes were bulging from her head, and I could see her migrating to the copper pans.
I followed her aimlessly around the store as she gawked at everything, then snubbed her nose at all the price tags. It was the same routine every single time. We came in, she found shit she liked, she looked at the price tag, then she went home four hours later to buy it online from some retail warehouse.
I didn’t know why the fuck she even went into stores anymore. She never purchased anything.
“Okay, so. You were saying you didn’t meddle even though you did. The last thing I remember you telling me was…” She trailed off.
“Seriously?” I asked. “You can’t even remember?”
“Look, you quit your job so I tossed all this shit from my mind. So just start there. You quit your job, and then what happened?”
“I was gathering up my stuff at the office, and I saw I had an email. I’d asked a connection of mine to unlock some files I couldn’t access on Zach.”
She nodded. “The guy in Oregon. Got it.”
“I don’t know what the fuck took my contact so long, but he finally got back to me with a bunch of documents. So much shit was in there. My client? Mr. Kent? Zach’s his fucking son.”
“Wait, are you serious?” she asked. “Kent is his father?”
We were at a dead standstill at the back of the store, and Kami’s attention was no longer on the knives surrounding our heads.
“Yeah, his abusive father. Everything fell into place when I saw that. Kent had me looking into thefts that weren’t even occurring. Mr. Kent was just randomly withdrawing the funds from a private computer to make his own son look like a fucking criminal so I would check up on him.”
“What a batshit-crazy human being,” she said.
“Yeah, but that wasn’t all. There was a birth certificate in all those files.”
“Aww, baby Zach?”
“Close,” I said. “Zach’s baby. His daughter, to be exact.”
“Oh, I didn’t know he had a daughter.”
“Neither did he,” I said.
“What?!” she exclaimed. “That’s crazy.”
“I know. I printed out all that shit and stuffed it into an envelope for my boss, attached my resignation letter to it, slid it under his door, and then headed back to Brookings to talk to Zach.”
“Girl, you couldn’t have just called the man? Or sent him an email?”
I shrugged. “Maybe I wanted an excuse to see him. I don’t fucking know. All I know is when I got there, things were in an uproar. I’d apparently missed his baby mama or whatever by a half hour or so, and he was beyond shocked.”
“I’ll bet,” Kami said. “I watch Maury. I’ve seen plenty of guys finding out they have a kid out of nowhere. They really show their true colors then.”
“He took me to his mother’s grave, Kami.”
“Oh, shit.” She paused. “Will it make me sound insensitive if I ask why?”
“I don’t really know. All he said was that he made a promise to his mother when she died, and he was fulfilling it. Then he told me he couldn’t continue whatever this was between us because he had too much going on.”
“You think he took responsibility for his daughter?” she asked.
“I hope so. From what he told me, she was dying.”
“His daughter?”
“No. His daughter’s mother. Baby mama? It’s why she came out of the blue. I also gave him a piece of my mind about what his daughter might experience if she grew up in the foster care system.”
“You didn’t,” she said.
“I fucking did. If I can save one child from the hell I experienced, then it was fucking worth it.”
Kami’s eyes started fluttering around the knives again before she sighed. “Man, when you get involved in something, you really get involved, don’t you?” Kami asked.
“No idea what that means, but sure,” I said.
“So, you came back into town. What did you do then? Cause I know that wasn’t the end of it.”
“I went to go see Mr. Kent again,” I said.
“You handed his ass to him, didn’t you?” she asked.
“Yes, I fucking did, and it felt great. I told him exactly the type of person he was, the type of father I thought he was, and the type of disgusting person I thought he was. I told him it was sick of him to paint his son as a criminal and mislead an entire investigative agency just to be a pussy-footer when it came to reaching out to his son.”
“Please tell me you called him that to his face,” she said, giggling.
“No, I kept my decorum that much, but…”
“Oh, no. Don’t do this. You always try to redeem people, Paige. The man’s a shithead.”
“Look, we had it wrong about his son, right? We thought he was a thief, and he turned out not to be at all. So maybe his father is just a man with a sordid past who was trying to make up for his mistakes.”
“You said this man was an abuser, Paige. You don’t come back from that.”
“Maybe not, but there was something I said to him, and I didn’t get the reaction I was expecting.”
“What did you do?”
“I told him that Zach turned out to be nothing like him and that he needed to be thankful for that. And he said, ‘Trust me, I am.’”
“So, who the fuck cares?”
“Kami, he sat down and started crying.”
“Crying?” she said.
“Yeah. Glistening eyes and everything.”
“The abusive father who framed his son for theft so he could check up on him, was crying?”
I nodded. “I know it sounds insane. I had to do a double take myself. But he was crying, Kami. I’m sure of it.”
“That doesn’t mean he’s changed or that he’s some nice guy that wants to be in his son’s life. For fuck’s sake, he didn’t even reach out himself. He got you to do his dirty work by feeding you lies.”
“Change has to start somewhere, right? It doesn’t all come at once.”
“Paige, you can’t be serious,” she said.
“What if I am?”
Kami looked at me for a long time before she grabbed my hand. She dragged me out of the store and around the corner of the outlet mall. We ducked into a coffee shop and found ourselves a little corner with two comfortable chairs and a cozy nook where our voices wouldn’t be heard.
“Get out of analytical mode for a second,” Kami said. “Where is all this coming from?”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“This isn’t about solving a case anymore,” she said. “Because if it was, you would have dropped it by now. You have all your answers. All the pieces are in place and interlocked together. You have the entire picture, but you’re not done. I can see that in your eyes. So, now it’s time for you to talk emotions.”
“Kami, come on.”
“Cut the shit and talk to me, Paige.”
I sat back into the faux-leather chair in the coffee shop and sighed. My eyes drifted out the window, and I saw two people holding hands. They were laughing and smiling, and the guy was looking down at this woman like she was his princess. The girl was chatting away about something, and the man was fully engrossed. I smiled as the two of them walked by.
Kami looked back to see what I was smiling at before she locked her eyes back on mine. “You care about him.”
“About who?”
“Zach. You care about him.”
“It doesn’t matter if I do. He told me he couldn’t keep this going, and I don’t blame him. He’s going through a lot. I even offered to tell him the truth, but he kept turning me down.”
“But you want to tell him,” she said. “That’s the thing.”
“So what?” I asked.
“I think it’s a great idea,” she said.
“What is?”
“Telling him everything. I think it’s a good idea. I think you’ve become emotionally involved and now you harbor guilt for lying to him. It’ll be good for you.”
“It doesn’t do me any good if he doesn’t want to hear it,” I said.
“I think he does. I think he was overwhelmed when you got there. I think he was prioritizing at that point, and if a dying baby mama dropped out of the sky and told him he needed to take his daughter he didn’t know he had, I’d say his issues with you were set on the backburner about four miles away.”
“I guess so,” I said.
“I think you should give it a few days, and then you should call him. See if he’s interested in talking. Then go from there.”
“And if he’s not?”
“Then you call me, and we’ll plan your life from here. Either way, you’re going to need a job. No matter how this turns out, the steps to make progress in your life don’t change.”
“I don’t know,” I said.
“There isn’t anything to know. As weird as all this shit has become, I see how he’s hooked his talons into you. I see how you care about him. I see how this has become emotional for you, too. You’re in new territory. For the past four or so years, you’ve been able to hide behind your job and your desk and your connections and you’ve dodged having to form real, true bonds with other people. And now that you have, you’re freaking out.”
I sighed as I sank into the chair and closed my eyes.
“All I want you to do is put yourself out there,” she said. “I don’t care if you call him up, blurt it out in one massive breath, and then hang up on him. It will be the most emotional connecting you’ve done with anyone since you fucking graduated college. And no matter how it turns out, I’m fucking proud of you, girl.”
“Really?” I asked.
“Hell, yeah! And if it works out, you two can fuck and make up. And if it doesn’t, we can get wine and you can tell me how small his dick is.”
“That would be a lie,” I said, snickering.
Kami’s eyes widened.
I smiled. “What I meant to say was, that sounds like a plan.”
“Uh huh,” she said, smirking. “I’m sure that’s exactly what you meant to say.”