But talking to them about it wasn’t the same as talking about it with Coert.
He’d been there. He knew Maria and Lonnie and Lars. He knew how intense and ugly that situation was, like only someone who’d been involved could know.
He didn’t just commiserate that I was dragged into something so ugly.
He got it.
I’d never had that.
And there had been something that felt nice about talking with him about it earlier. Like we were a two-person support group, the only two people who could belong.
But now I was being confronted with all the time that had happened in between. Confronted with the fact Coert had lived a life where he got a toolbox, the tools in it and had learned how to do things because experience and years and life had taught him how.
Experience and years and life I had not been a part of.
“So, what do you want? Peephole or speakeasy?” Coert prompted.
“Speakeasy,” I answered.
He nodded and immediately turned to the door, set down the box and muttered, “Gotta go out and grab my saw.”
And with that, he opened the door and walked through it.
Midnight woofed.
I instantly felt even more uncomfortable and at a loss of what to do.
I knew he wasn’t there to share a drink or do a chore and then be paid back by staying and having dinner.
But his matter-of-fact, get-on-with-it attitude told me he simply was there to do what he needed to do and then leave.
I moved to the kitchen to find something for myself to do.
I decided to pour wine. I had no beer for him because I no longer drank beer. But he probably wouldn’t accept one anyway.
Feeling deflated and then feeling more deflated because I knew I had no reason to feel deflated in the first place, I opened a bottle of red and poured myself some wine. I kept my eye on Midnight when she woofed again, dashing to the door as Coert came through it carefully, eyes on the dog, murmuring to her as she gave Coert another sniff then started to wag her tail and crowd around him as he got down to work.
“I don’t have beer but would you like something to drink?” I asked to be polite.
But drat it all, for other reasons besides.
“I’m good. This’ll take a bit but not too long,” he replied, not looking at me, looking for a socket in which to plug his electric saw with its thin blade.
Apparently he was very much a fixer-upper kind of guy if he had one of those. I couldn’t fathom what anyone would need to cut enough of to have a tool with a plug to cut that much of it. And I felt relatively certain that he didn’t offer the service of giving every single woman in his county a speakeasy so she could make sure she knew who was behind her door before she opened it.
Coert went to work on the door at the same time he went to work ignoring me (but not Midnight, who he talked to a lot as he worked, mostly because she was excited about his activity and getting in his way, his handling of her something that was sweet and I found it highly attractive, something I had to go to work on ignoring).
I also went to work answering meager emails, mostly replying to Verity about a possible visit that I’d been looking forward to planning with her but now I regrettably had to find a vague way to postpone, because I didn’t want her around when Lars was on the loose.
Then I started randomly online shopping, this being random because I was a woman who needed nothing so I had nothing to look for.
But no woman actually needed nothing, and I proved that true when I found a fabulous, quilted microfiber, memory foam dog bed that had personalization and cost a veritable fortune (for a dog bed) that Midnight had to have.
I was ordering it when Coert said, “Got a Dustbuster?”
I looked to him then down to the floor where the shavings were, back up, and I saw the little door with the little hinges and little bolt and tiny knob that was very attractive, and my stomach sank that he was done.
“I’ll take care of it, Coert,” I told him.
He nodded and moved to the other door and my stomach flipped that he was going to stay to do both.
The stomach flip was not good.
None of this was good—guard dogs, guns, speakeasies, men firing swaths of vengeance—but insanely I felt that stomach flip was the worst of all.
Midnight moved to help him and I moved to the small utility cupboard Walt had put in at the end of the kitchen where I kept cleaning supplies and plugged in my Dyson handheld.
Midnight was as enthralled with my noises and movements as she was with Coert’s, dividing her attention between us as I vacuumed up the shavings. Then she went back to Coert when my paltry chore was done.
I went back to my laptop.
Coert came to me twenty minutes later when he was finished.
“My boys know you’re a possible target so they’re gonna be driving out here regular to check on things,” he stated.
I looked up at him from my stool and nodded, wondering how he explained to “his boys” that I, too, was a possible target. That being a possible target along with their boss.
“You order an alarm to be put in?” he asked.
I nodded again and told him, “Midnight and I researched that and made an appointment while you were gone.”
This time he nodded. “I got a piece, a little .22. Got a friend, handin’ it off to him. He’s gonna meet you at the range in Blakely. I’ll text you the address, you text me some times you can meet him and I’ll set it up.”
So Coert wasn’t going to show me how to use his gun. His friend was.
Definitely done with spending time with me.
Definitely deflated.
“Okay, Coert.”
“He’ll show you how to handle it, load it, fire it, give you safety lessons. You won’t use it. Just backup security. In the unlikely event you do use it, it’s a .22. The damage it can cause when it comes to guns is not as much as other calibers. So unless you got great aim, that kind of gun is about slowing him down, not killing him. Does that make sense?”
“Yes,” I repeated.
“You comfortable with that?” he pushed.
I was really not.
I nodded.
“You go somewhere, be sharp and keep eyes on mirrors to spot if someone is following you. And don’t walk the coastal paths unless you have your phone and dog with you, or preferably not at all until I get this guy caught.”
“Okay,” I said again.
“You hear something, get tweaked, I don’t care, Cady, you call 911. Okay?”
Call 911.
Not him.
More official and possibly a faster response time.
Still, my stomach sunk deeper.
But I nodded.
“We got a BOLO on him. Every law enforcement agency in this county and the surrounding ones know we’re lookin’ for him and have his picture and what we know about the vehicle he may be driving. He’s targeting a cop, they’re motivated. You understand?”
“Yes. I understand.”
“Good,” he muttered. “Be alert and you can’t be too cautious. You tell the guys workin’ for you about this so they can keep an eye out too. I’ll have a deputy come out and put a picture of Lars in your mailbox so you can show that around. It might freak ’em but better they’re freaked and got their eyes peeled than they just think Lars is some other tourist who wants to take pictures of a Maine lighthouse. Yeah?”
“Yes, Coert.”
“Right,” he muttered. “Gotta go.”
And he did indeed have to go because after he gave Midnight some neck scratches, he grabbed his stuff and moved to the door.
I trailed him. “I really must thank you. You didn’t have to—”
He stopped at the door, turned to me and cut me off.
“I did have to. You were right. I kept you in when you wanted out. Now, all these years, you’re still in. This is my responsibility.”
This mention of what happened didn’t feel like a support group in the slightest.
And his taking that responsibility made me feel awful because I’d made him think he held it.
However, there was something deeper in this admission. I could feel it, sense it, actually see it in the set of his face.
It was just that we weren’t anywhere near a place I could explore it.
But it was so present I felt I needed to try.