“Eh. It sounds like you’ve got bigger problems than a guy like me growing a little grass without paperwork.”
“Your dad know about this enterprise of yours?”
“Nope. Between you and me, please and thank you.”
She shoves her hands in her pockets, looks up at the sky. It’s one thing she likes about it down here. The stars crisp and clear, like something you could reach up and touch, come away with fingers skimmed with glitter.
“It’s nice you’re here, taking care of Jane.”
“She’s family. No-brainer.” A cliché, but true.
He sparks his joint. “You miss North Jersey? Heard you were kind of a big deal up that way.”
“Eh. Most of the time they had me dressed up, pretending to be a sex worker, so the boys could nail someone in a sting.”
“You’re a shit liar, Callie Hauser.”
She laughs. It was true, sometimes she had to dress up, especially earlier in her career. Stilettos, sequined top, a rush of wind up the back of her miniskirt every time a truck blew by. One time her team was loaned a red Porsche so they could pretend to be big-time cocaine traders, though her partner got to drive it and she was in shotgun, playing the kingpin’s girlfriend. But she misses it. She misses it all the time.
She raises her hands in the air. “You got me.”
Luke takes another drag, exhales. “You know what they say about lying. You’ve got to tell a lie that’s as close to the truth as you can get.”
The screen door creaks behind them. Damien, who casts a quick look between them. Luke holds the joint out to him but he shakes his head.
“No thanks. Gotta lead a moonlight hike in an hour.”
“Was that on the schedule, Damien? Your website isn’t up to date, my dude.”
A look crosses Damien’s face, a shadow like a cloud blowing past the moon. “Private party. Don’t put those on the site.”
Luke stares at Damien over the top of Callie’s head and Damien locks in and stares back. They’re telling one another something, some shorthand here that Callie can only feel the edges of.
“What are you two doing out here anyway? You keeping good Chief Hauser here with your stoner ramblings?”
“I told you, knock it off with that Chief Hauser shit,” Callie says.
Luke cuts in. “We’re talking about lying. What’s the last lie you told, Damien?”
The dare hangs in the air a second, then two, three.
Damien glowers at Luke before clearing his throat. “I told Jane she pushed a tennis ball two inches with her foot at physical therapy yesterday. But she probably only moved it a quarter inch.”
The image makes Callie wince. She knows what Jane looks like when she’s throwing all of herself into something, whether that’s an 800-meter race or studying for her Organic Chemistry final, the way she bites down on her right cheek and narrows her eyes. She can picture Jane in the physical therapist’s office, shaking with the effort it takes her mangled nerves and muscles and bones to coordinate together. Luke looks between his feet, chastened.
Callie can’t decide if it’s cruelty or kindness, lies like that. Letting someone lie to you. On Jane’s third night in the hospital she left Callie a voicemail, her voice a ragged whisper.I was going to leave him, Callie. I was saving money. I had a plan. Now what do I do?When Callie asked her about it Jane said she didn’t remember calling her at all. Blamed the morphine.
“Opal has started to lie. Or not lie, you know. But invent. They say it’s a kid’s way of learning to tell stories.”
“What kinds of stories?” Callie asks.
“Ah, you know. Kid stuff. That she has a secret house in the woods and a barn full of zebras who talk to her. That she has a friend named Olivia who comes over at night when everyone is asleep.”
Callie thinks that they sound like the stories of a kid who is lonely—Opal should be in preschool, but Damien and Jane have kept her home. The nearest preschool is nearly forty minutes away. One more bill.
“Speaking of Opal, thanks for your help tonight, Cal. She adores you.”
“Really, it’s a pleasure. She’s the best part of my day.”
