Spring Tide (15 page)

“Right. There are a lot of advantages to living on a houseboat. People do it.”

“People do—” her mother sputtered. “Crazy old hermits who never shower or cut their hair do it.”

“There’s a shower.”

Deuce appeared in the kitchen, a white cone surrounding his head. He banged it against the leg of a chair as he made his way over to Stef and dropped dejectedly to the floor at her feet.

“Stephanie,” her mother persisted, “what were you thinking?”

“It’s not that crazy. As soon as I get it seaworthy, I’ll bring it up the river and take you for a cruise.”

“You mean you can’t take it on the water?”

“Not yet.”

Her mother stared hard at her, a look of grim concern on her face. “Where is this boat?”

“Off of Highway One-Sixty in Stillwater Bay.”

“So you’re going to commute all the way in from there every day until you get it seaworthy? That’s like a two-hour drive? And then you’re going to bring it up here and park it in some marina and pay hundreds of dollars a month for a slip? I just don’t see how that makes sense. Your apartment was nice and affordable and only ten minutes from the police station.”

Her mother was, as usual, boiling everything down to the practical matter of money.

“It wouldn’t make a lot of sense,” Stef agreed, “if I was still going to be working for Oakland PD.”

They’d come to the place in the conversation where Stef had to tell her the real news. As mystified as her mother was about the houseboat, it was nothing compared to how distressed she would be by Stef’s larger plan. They were in for a difficult evening. Stef didn’t know how she would explain what she barely comprehended herself, that she needed to get away, far away, and try to forget, and that she believed the gentle lapping of water against the hull of her boat would somehow allow that to happen. And if it didn’t, at least out there, lost and alone, she wouldn’t be a threat or concern to anyone.

“I won’t be commuting, Mom,” she said, steeling herself. “I resigned from the force today.”

Tuesdays were Jackie’s late nights, the day of the week they kept the office open until eight so people could come in after work. It was always busy Tuesday nights and she was usually exhausted by the time it was over. This night was no exception. After hanging up her smock in her office, she came out front to find Niko locking the door.

“Let’s get outta here,” she said.

He smiled and nodded. “Just gotta feed Bud.” He opened the parakeet’s cage and took out the plastic feed dish, saying, “A canary walks into a vet’s office and asks for a bag of bird seed. The vet hands it over and says, ‘That’ll be twenty dollars.’ The canary pays and the vet adds, ‘We don’t get many canaries in here buying their own bird seed.’ ‘At those prices,’ said the canary, ‘I’m not surprised.’”

Jackie chuckled. Niko replaced the dish full of seed, and Bud immediately hopped over to it and started eating.

Jackie covered her mouth as she launched into a sizable yawn. Thinking over the hectic day, she realized it was about time for Deuce to come back to have his sutures removed.

“Can you check and see when the follow-up appointment is for Stef Byers and Deuce?” she asked.

“The appointment was for Monday. Yesterday. She canceled.”

“Canceled? Did she reschedule?”

“No. I asked, but she said she’d get back to me.”

“What was the reason?”

“She didn’t say.” He puckered his lips at Bud and made a kissy sound as he closed the cage. Bud’s head bobbed rapidly up and down in response.

“Give me her phone number. I’ll give her a call tomorrow. Those sutures need to come out.”

Niko called up the record on the computer and scanned the screen. “No phone number here. Let me check the form.”

He went to the records room to consult the original form Stef had filled out.

“She didn’t put a phone number,” he reported when he returned. “Left it blank. Sorry. I didn’t notice at the time.”

Jackie sighed. “Okay. Thanks.”

“A guy walks into a vet’s office,” Niko began, so Jackie paused at the door, knowing that all his jokes were mercifully short. “The guy has a parrot on his head. The vet says, ‘What’s the trouble?’ and the parrot says, ‘You gotta get this guy off my ass.’”

She patted his shoulder, as if in sympathy, said good night, then left the clinic, debating her next move with Stef. She knew she’d been brusque that day, so much so that she felt guilty about it almost immediately afterward. She had been looking forward to the follow-up appointment, planning on a friendlier encounter this time. Maybe Stef had gone to another vet. Who could blame her?

Her car was sucking fumes, so she pulled into the gas station on Main Street and hooked the hose into her tank while she went into the Quickie-Mart for a chili dog. This was an indulgence she allowed herself only occasionally, usually on these late Tuesday nights when she could justify it with the claim of raging hunger and no time to cook.

“Hey, Jackie,” called Mona from behind the counter. “Working late?”

“Just got off,” Jackie replied.

Mona was a single mother with difficult challenges. She had never finished high school. She was in her early twenties, thin, with thick black eyebrows starkly contrasting her long butter-yellow hair. She and Jackie had gone to the same high school, but their experiences there and afterward were remarkably dissimilar. Jackie didn’t know why. She thought it was just the way things fell out. You can make plans for yourself, but things happen every day you didn’t count on. Mona had had plans too. She’d wanted to be a nurse. She still did. But one night in her junior year of high school she went to a football game with a boy and things got hot under the bleachers. Everything changed for Mona in that moment. At eighteen, she became a single mother. Jackie knew it could have been her. Or she could have ended up in an accident like the one that had killed one of her classmates and permanently disabled another. Things happen you don’t expect. All the time. Life changes in an instant. She was acutely aware of that.

Jackie had been lucky. Most of her plans had worked out. She’d gone to veterinary school and eventually opened her own practice, fulfilling her professional dreams. But she had had other plans that didn’t work out. Like the ones about getting married and having a family. When she was nineteen, in college, she was engaged to a nice math major, a guy who wanted to give her everything, make her happy, set out on a fairy tale life with her. She had wanted that so badly, to be normal and safe, to leave behind the part of herself that made her different and kept her running scared.

How she had loved showing off her engagement ring, being his fiancée, announcing to the world that she was like everyone else, a woman about to be a man’s wife. She’d loved being the boy’s fiancée more than she’d loved the boy. At the time, she was in love with a girl and had been for a while. Leslie. Fortunately for both of them, though her fiancé didn’t appreciate it then, she realized in time she was meant for a different kind of life and let him go. She then began the more difficult journey of embracing her true identity. Whenever she thought about her nineteen-year-old self, she was grateful to her, grateful she’d made the right decision and had been brave enough to give up the default path.

Even though Jackie hadn’t yet found someone to spend her life with, she was optimistic that she would, eventually, meet the right woman.

“I put a couple hot dogs on the roller grill just a while ago,” Mona informed her with a smile.

Jackie smiled back. She and Mona were the only people who knew about her dirty little hot dog secret. She went to the back of the store where the wieners were riding on a metal rack inside a warm Plexiglas cube under a fluorescent tube light. Their taut skins sparkled with beads of fat, a testament to their salty, porky goodness. This was wrong in so many ways. Jackie knew, but she didn’t care.

She put a wiener in a bun and piled on a dipper of chili, then a hefty dollop of melted cheese. Anticipating her first bite, she wondered if this was a benefit or detriment of being single. If someone were waiting at home for her, saving her a healthy plate of food, there’d be no chili dog. On the other hand, there’d be someone waiting at home for her, joyfully anticipating her arrival, kissing her affectionately at the door. She did like chili dogs, but on late Tuesday nights, perhaps more than any other time, the empty house seemed emptier than ever. The chili dog was a tiny bit of compensation for that.

Jackie returned to the checkout counter to pay, noting the big jar of Ida’s World-Famous Beef Jerky at her elbow. “How’s Ashley? Still playing the violin?”

“Yes,” Mona declared proudly. “She’s getting really good. The grammar school’s going to give a mini-concert later this month at the crawdad festival, so they’re practicing for that.”

“I’ll try to catch that, but I’ll be working the festival all weekend myself so I may not see much of the other entertainment. Our band is playing.”

“I’ll bring Ashley by. She’ll be blown away by your Granny and her fiddle.”

“Granny’s a wonder, isn’t she?”

“All of you are. Maybe you can sneak out for a few minutes to check out the rest of the festival. They’ve got to give you a food break so you can get your annual fix of crawdads.” Mona laughed. “Ashley used to be afraid of them, but now she thinks they’re yummy.”

Jackie bit into her hot dog, snapping through the wiener casing with an audible pop. “I’ll tell you what’s yummy,” she said after swallowing. “This!”

Mona laughed. “Oh, Jackie, you’re funny. Everybody thinks you’re a vegetarian. You know that, right?”

“No clue where they got that idea.”

“Maybe they got it from my Ashley. Remember a couple years ago when we brought in that miserable little runt of a puppy I thought for sure was going to die?”

“The chocolate Lab.”

“After you saved that puppy, for a year at least, whenever anybody asked Ashley what she wanted to be when she grew up, she said she wanted to be a vegetarian like Dr. Townsend.”

Jackie laughed. “That’s cute. For some reason, people do expect an animal doctor to be a vegetarian. That doesn’t seem all that logical to me. Sort of like expecting a farmer to eat only meat.” Jackie shrugged and took another bite of her hot dog. “I’m not altogether sure this is meat, but it’s really good, whatever it is.”

Mona opened her mouth to speak and Jackie raised one hand. “No, I don’t want to know.”

With no phone number for Stef, Jackie decided to make a house call Wednesday after work. Could be a rotten idea, she knew. She might even get a knife between the eyes, but she felt compelled to do it, if only to make it clear there were no hard feelings on her part. Yes, Stef had been rude and had mocked her and tried to humiliate her, but at their last meeting at the clinic, she had been a totally different woman. She’d been humble, contrite and clearly distressed by her dog’s injuries. A woman in distress, that’s the last image Jackie had of Stef, and it moved her. She found that image much more attractive than the other sarcastic, disdainful one. She had a hard time resisting a woman in distress.

Stef was working at the back of her boat. She stopped what she was doing and stood up, peering at Jackie’s vehicle as it pulled into the driveway. Deuce ran over to greet her, no longer wearing bandages or a cone. Stef walked over, an adjustable wrench in hand.

“Hi,” Jackie called cheerfully, stepping out of the car.

“Hi,” Stef replied.

“How’s Deuce doing?” She knelt down to get a closer look at his mouth.

“Great. He’s his old self. He’s just a little tender.”

“Niko told me you canceled your appointment. I was concerned.”

“Nothing to be concerned about. Something came up, so I was out of town.”

“We should get those stitches out.”

“I was going to bring him in tomorrow.”

“Oh.” Jackie nodded, aware that there was nothing of the woman in distress about Stef today. “Since I’m here, why don’t I do it now. Save you a trip. I brought my scissors.”

Stef hesitated, her lips pressed tightly together, her eyes vaguely antagonistic. Damn, she was a sexy woman! Jackie thought. Sexy in an aloof way. A tough, sultry kind of way. In a way that just made you want to grab her and kiss that pout right off her mouth.