He laughs. “That’s true. You’ll have no problem. Not much that can set you off course when the water is as flat as this. Just nice, easy paddling. I thought we might go out and back for an hour or so, just get you used to things?”
“Sounds good,” she says. How hard can it be? But the second she wades into the water she slips on slick rocks, ends up on her hands and knees in the shallows.
“Whoa there.” He steadies her boat with one hand, holds out another to help her up.
“I think I hate kayaking,” she says. She means it but he laughs, and she likes the sound of it, an easy, big laugh that sounds surprised at itself. It rings out across the water. She wants to hear it again.
She follows Adrian down the creek, through the bends, as he points out places turtles nest. She learns that he studied marine biology at a college by the sea. “All that farmland back home waspretty but after a certain point it just made me feel locked in. I always knew I wanted to be near water.” He talks to his parents a few times a week—they still live in the house where he grew up. She feels a stab of envy, that Adrian and his family seem like the Caputos. All rallying around one another, main characters in one another’s lives.
He asks her about her family, about where she grew up. She says what she always says about Jenna. Her beautiful voice, her love of music, her red hair.
“She’s… missing.” Callie says. She hadn’t planned on mentioning it. Didn’t want to saddle this man with her baggage, but the words end up tumbling out.
“Missing how?”
Callie sighs. “I brought her in for driving drunk. She slept it off in the station overnight but no one has seen her or heard from her since the morning she was released. And then they found her bag off the Batona Trail. Drugs inside.”
“Wait. Those posters. That’s her?”
“Yeah. Not that they’re going to do any good. I’ve got a couple other departments looking out for her, as far as Philly, Atlantic City, but… nothing.”
“I’m so sorry.”
They’re quiet for a while, that the only noises are the birds overhead and the sounds of their paddles sliding in and out of the water. The trees and the red of the understory are reflected in the lake’s surface, the colors rich and sumptuous together, almost too vivid to be real, more like something assembled and composed, an oil painting. For a moment she gets it. The pull of the water. The austere, untouched beauty you find in pockets of the pines. Why someone might choose this place.
“Is it just you? Dealing with all this? Or do you have siblings?”
“Nah, only child. But I have a good friend who’s like a sister to me. That’s why I came back here in the first place. She needed me, and it’s my turn to be there for her.”
“That’s noble of you. Not everyone would do that. Uproot their lives.”
“She’s got a kid, the funniest, sweetest three-year-old. Most of my help is watching her, and that’s just—pleasure. I don’t have anything else in my life like that. The pure innocence. That goofiness. It’s good for me, too. Kids don’t look at you and see all of your baggage, you know?”
“The dad still in the picture?”
“Yeah. I wasn’t sure about him when they first met. He’s a lot older than we are. She moved here after she made all these plans for her life, and supported his business, had a kid young.”
“Their trips seem awesome.”
“They do, but it washisdream, you know? She was a chemistry major in college. She had wanted to be an engineer. And then she fit herself around him. He’s not a bad guy, a good dad, but I guess sometimes I wonder what would have happened if she hadn’t met him. But then I realize, that would mean no Opal. And that kid is like pure sunlight.” She blows out a sigh. “Shit. That’s the first time I’ve said any of that out loud to anyone. Maybe that makes me sound like an asshole.”
He shakes his head. “Not an asshole. Just at ease. It’s the water. It relaxes you. See? Maybe you are a kayaker after all.” She hadn’t even noticed that they were almost back at the launch, until she caught sight of their cars parked side by side. She’s surprised to realize she’s disappointed. To get back to land. To say goodbye.
On her drive home she sees so many dead deer in the backs of trucks, hooves splayed, torsos strangely concave where the hunters removed the organs. She knows this from Jenna, who used to hunt deer along with Callie’s grandfather when she was a girl, before her mom got sick. It helps cool the meat, taking away the insides that still pulse warm with blood. Jenna always described hunting as peaceful, as a way of being part of the land. But Callie can’t see it that way. It makes her stare at the thick trees with even more apprehension, to think that there are coils of intestines, the wet bags of deer stomachs, livers, kidneys, hearts in wait in those woods.
She gets atext from Healey not long after she gets home.Got the file you’re looking for. Transferred to our department in a big batch of old cases eight years ago. I’m working with a freelance genetic genealogist on a murder-rape from ’82. She’s good. Her team is working on the DNA sample, pulling a profile together.
Healey sends her a link to the woman’s website next. Her name is Rebecca Nixon.
From Nixon’s headshot alone, Callie already doesn’t like her. A mouthful of big, white veneers, highlighted hair in barrel curls. Pictures of her on the homepage, hugging a frail woman with wooly white hair, a photo on the mantel behind them of a teenage girl in a cap and gown. Rebecca with her eyes closed, resting her chin on the woman’s shoulder, self-satisfied, overly familiar.
Callie feels a jolt, territorial. Wants to text Healy back:You should have run it by me.But what ownership does she really have over this case? All the files were with Healy and the Cold Case guys all along. All she did was bring it to his attention. Hell, she asked him to do exactly this.
There’s a media page on Rebecca Nixon’s website. She clicks on the first video—an interview with ABC News. The correspondent asks Rebecca what it means to be working in her field at this particular time.
“What we do—it’s the Wild West, really. There are no rules. We’re inventing an entire discipline as we go. It’s riveting. I mean, I used to do product marketing for a cosmetics company and I taught myself the skills to solve murder cases that even the cops, with all of their tools and resources, could never figure out.”
Callie recoils at the barb, even as she knows it is true. Look at all of the missed opportunities and willful ignorance around the Baby Doe case. The rumors and hearsay and facts lost to time. DNA, on the other hand, is efficient. Can’t lie or obscure. Below the media links, an invitation to follow Rebecca on TikTok. She wonders if Jane knows who she is.
