To that, he inquired, “Are you alone?”
“If your question is, have I gotten a dog yet, the answer is no. But I’m in search of one. A Newfoundland because we’re close to Newfoundland. I mean, not really, but I’m a heckuva lot closer to it than I was in Denver. But I think that might be goofy and I’ve always loved Hagrid’s dog in the Harry Potter movies. I had to look it up. It’s a Neapolitan mastiff. I haven’t gotten around to Googling breeders because I also think I want a French bulldog, so I can’t make up my mind. But I don’t want a dog that slobbers so I’m not sure I’m on the right trail.”
“You aren’t on the right trail,” he muttered.
“That’s what I thought. But how bad is dog slobber?” I asked. “If you love something, they could slobber everywhere for all you care.”
“Did half the jetty go up in flames tonight and I’m sittin’ here talkin’ with a drunk woman about dog slobber?” he asked.
I shut up and rethought the wisdom of phoning Coert to make sure he wasn’t suffering smoke inhalation.
“My question wasn’t about a dog, Cady,” he stated.
“Oh,” I mumbled.
“Are you alone?” he asked.
Oh my God.
“Do you . . . think I . . . I would phone you if I had a man—”
“Don’t need details,” he interrupted me curtly, “but do need an answer.”
Suddenly, I was sobering.
“Why do you need an answer?” I inquired.
“Half the jetty went up in flames tonight.”
I stared at my lap then I looked over the back of the couch at the town.
“Are you . . . ?” He couldn’t be. Could he? “Are you asking me if I have an alibi?”
“I’m asking if you’re alone.”
He could!
“You’re asking me for an alibi.”
“I haven’t seen you in weeks, Cady, and you’re callin’ me to see if I’m all right after a bad fire sweeps the jetty. I’m not a fireman. I’m a cop. I’m pissed half my town’s new jetty went up in flames but I’m all right. Now what I want to know is why you’re calling me out of the blue about something that has shit to do with me.”
This was a question I couldn’t answer verbally because first, answering it verbally would be admitting verbally that I’d made myself drunk with worry (literally) about a man I was supposed to leave alone and move on from. And second, I was too angry to enunciate words since I’d worried myself drunk about a man who was asking me for an alibi for a fire I had nothing to do with.
“We’re done talking,” I stated stiffly.
“Cady—”
“And don’t you come out here using your secret emergency code on my gate and hammer on my door in order to be mean to me, Coert Yeager. Forget I called. I didn’t call. This conversation didn’t happen. I’m back to steering clear. But warning, when I get my Newfoundland or mastiff or bulldog, I’m teaching him to bite tall, dark-haired, handsome men in aviator glasses.”
Uh-oh.
Did I say the word handsome?
“Ca—”
“Goodbye, Coert.”
I disconnected, and then I turned the ringer off and finally I just shut the phone down altogether.
I mean, really.
He asked for my alibi?
I glared at my phone not wishing it would explode but wishing my glare could transfer through it and scorch Coert Yeager.
I then turned it back on for the sole purpose of erasing Coert “Mr. Judgmental and Grudge Holding Champion of the Universe” Yeager’s number from my phone.
It rang in my hand.
It was Coert.
I took the call for the sole purpose of saying what I said in my greeting, “Do not ever call this number again.”
“Do not ever hang up on me again,” he growled back.
“I can hang up on who I want,” I retorted. “And anyway, it won’t matter because we’re never speaking again.”
“Cady, why are you getting drunk by yourself at the lighthouse?”
“Because I live at the lighthouse. I mean, how crass, going to some bar to drink yourself drunk. Especially while the jetty is burning down. That would be terrible manners. And anyway, you know I detest drunk driving.”
“Yeah, I know that,” he said softly, reminiscently.
Since I was allowing myself to swear that night, fuck him and his soft reminiscence.
I mean, really?
“Am I done with my interrogation, Sheriff?”
“I asked you one question,” he retorted.
“Perhaps this conversation, but just to say, the heavy, judgmental burden of shame is leaking through, Coert. Next thing you know, you’ll have me walking through the streets naked while people throw garbage at me.”
“What the fuck?” he whispered.
“Don’t you watch Game of Thrones?”
“No.”
I stared at my knees in complete and utter shock.
“Who doesn’t watch Game of Thrones?” I asked incredulously.
“Me,” he said impatiently. “Listen, Cady, try to focus on what I’m saying and how I’m saying it. Okay? You with me?”
He seemed earnest now and not jerky so I said, “I’m with you.”
“Are you in trouble?”
I stopped thinking he wasn’t being jerky.
Instead, I was just plain hurt.
“She had nothing to do with me,” I whispered.
“What?” he asked.
“I wanted to pull away. It was you that kept me in.”
He finally grew silent.
“You knew I did. I told you I did. From the start, Coert. You knew. Or at least Tony knew.”
“Cady.”
I didn’t know if he intended to say more but it didn’t matter.
I didn’t let him.
“You can’t make me pay for what she did. I had no idea she had that in her but it didn’t matter. She was my friend but I wanted to be on the right path. I wanted to pull away. It was you who kept me in. So you can’t make me pay for something that had nothing to do with me. I didn’t pull the trigger on Lonnie. I didn’t sell drugs to high school kids. I worked at Sip and Save and prayed every night my boyfriend would break free.”
“Cady—”
“I earned it, you know. I earned what you thought of me. I earned you being mad at me. I earned you walking away from me,” I told him. “I know that. I know. But I didn’t earn this.”
“Cady,” he whispered.
“Goodbye, Coert, and please, God, do not phone again.”
With that, I hung up, erased him from my phone and then turned it off.
“Newfoundland,” I declared, staring at the dark sea.
Then I got up and left my snifter and the tequila right where it was, my phone too, not that it mattered since it was off, and I went through my house and turned out lights on three stories before I hit my snug bed and climbed in.
“No, a mastiff,” I said to the dark.
By the time I went to sleep, I’d changed my mind to bulldog then Newfoundland and back to mastiff about fifty times.
What I didn’t do before I fell asleep was cry.
I was sitting outside my lovely, curved, butcher-block topped island with the raised outer counter so it had an inset area on the inside where I could tuck canisters (and I did). It also had double spice pullout shelves in the middle where I could keep spices handy (something I did). This island, something that Paige had designed and Walt had had built for me, was one of the seventy-five thousand, six hundred and twenty-two things I adored about my lighthouse.
There wasn’t a lot of room but they went to pains to make every inch not only gorgeous, but functional.
It was the day after the fire and Magdalene’s newspaper website was speculating about what happened, but not speculating about the fact that four shops had burned down, because they had, and fortunately no one was hurt.
I’d gone on from researching the meager details to be had about the fire to searching for Newfoundland breeders (and mastiff and French bulldog, and by the way, pedigree dogs were not inexpensive) when there was a knock on my door, not the one by the garage, the other one at the foot of the stairs.