Damien had offered to pick her up at her apartment, but Hattie had declined. Romeo‘s Italian Eatery was walking distance and Hattie needed to calm her churning emotions. She had never been on a date before. She wasn’t entirely sure it was a date though something in Damien’s demeanor had told her it was. Jude would have known right away and laughed at Hattie’s obliviousness.
“But I’m not Jude,” Hattie whispered tears pricking the back of her eyes, which reminded her she hadn’t put on any makeup. Jude had given her a makeup set, but the small compacts still sat in their original packaging, unopened.
Hattie missed her mama terribly and slumped onto her sofa, leaning her head against the floral fabric. Mama would have helped Hattie prepare for her first date, for her whole life, but they were interrupted. Sometimes Hattie felt interrupted as a person as if she was just developing when a cog got stuck in the wheel and the machine spit her out unfinished. She glanced at her easel in the corner, paints spread across the floor, and wanted desperately to take off the orange dress, put on her nightshirt and paint until midnight.
Jude would never miss a date. She’d rearrange her entire schedule to meet a man she liked.
“I can do this,” Hattie whispered, glancing at the yellow telephone sitting on her side table. She could call Jude, ask her what to wear, how to do her makeup. Or call Gram Ruth, but that idea formed a knot in her stomach.
She had spoken with Gram Ruth several times since discovering the newspaper clipping. Gram would have been suspicious otherwise and outright angry.
Gram had always been involved in Hattie’s life, bought her clothes, braided her hair, insisted that Hattie keep her girlhood room exactly the same until her sixteenth birthday when she was allowed to put on a paisley bedspread that Camille sewed for her. They packed her dollhouse and toys into the barn, and Hattie brought in books and paints though Gram Ruth did not allow painting on the carpet so they sat untouched on her desk.
Her real painting happened in the barn. Hattie had cleaned out one of the old stables and created a makeshift artist’s studio. Sometimes she fell asleep on a pile of moth eaten horse blankets, memories of riding horses that never existed flitting through her dreams.
The phone rang, and Hattie jumped, startled. She stared at it for a moment as if the sound were alien and the person on the other end brought premonitions of doom. Three rings later, she picked it up.
“Hello?” she said, hoping it wasn’t Gram who chastised her if she didn’t answer the phone: Hattie Porter Speaking.
“Hattie? Hi, it’s Damien. I’m at the restaurant and just wanted to check on you.”
Hattie glanced at the clock hanging over her little Formica table and realized it was almost six-thirty pm. She was already fifteen minutes late.
“Oh, oh no. I’m sorry. I’m leaving right now.”
“Would you like me to pick you up?” he asked. He didn’t sound annoyed, and Hattie considered his offer, but no, she wasn’t ready to share her home yet.
“No, umm thank you though. I’ll be there in five minutes.”
She hung up the phone and rushed from the apartment forgetting all about make-up and mothers.
Damien sat in a little half-moon booth lit by a tiffany lamp suspended overhead. He’d ordered a bottle of wine, which Hattie sipped nervously as he talked.
“My parents spend their winters in Florida, snow-birds as they’re called these days,” he laughed, and Hattie noticed a dimple at the edge of his full lips. “My brother’s an Anthropology professor at the University of Michigan. He and my father love to have these long philosophical debates about religion versus evolution. I tend to side with my mom and stay out of it. The truth is they’re both dogmatic men, they believe in black and white truths. I’m just not that way. There are shades of gray, in fact, all the world exists in shades of gray. I’ve yet to find a universal truth where its exact opposite doesn’t have a sliver of truth as well.”
Hattie considered his words. She too could not say where her beliefs laid. Did she think God created man? Sort of, except in her mind God was not a man, but love, a love so huge it gave life to all things including the spark that started man.
“I hope that doesn’t bother you,” Damien continued. “I know you attend church so…”
Hattie shook her head.
“I go to church because I feel connected there. It’s one of the few places I can sit and focus without thinking I might float away,” she admitted, blushing as if he might laugh.
“I appreciate that. I grew up going to church every Sunday, my father insisted on it. On my own, I’m less dedicated, but I have grown fond of Pastor Greg and I know what you mean. Last year I traveled to London with my mother and visited the Westminster Abbey. Something about it was so rooted, like it grew out of the earth. I walked in and felt held.” He cupped his palm and Hattie imagined curling into a teeny little ball and falling asleep there in the creases of his flesh. She thought she might paint that image later.
“I’ve never been out of Michigan,” she admitted. “London is so far away.”
He smiled and reached across the table touching her wrist.
“Maybe someday we’ll go there together.”
Jude
Jude walked into the squat brick building that served as the Mason police station.
Her heels clacked against the green linoleum that reminded her of the color that danced behind her eyes after too much drinking. She blinked at the four small desks arranged haphazard around the room, all stacked waist high with papers. She paused at the reception desk.
“Hi. I’m Jude Porter, with the Wexford County Gazette, and I was hoping to speak with Sheriff Hal Jones.” Jude said offering the press I.D. that Clayton had given her.
She barely glanced at the card, or at Jude. Apparently, the advertisement in her magazine about Husband Pleasing Coffee was more interesting than her job.
“Retired more than a decade ago,” the woman, Lori according to her name tag, replied, still not looking up.
“Okay, well I would like to speak with a detective then. Please?” Jude tried to keep her voice even but knew her irritation seeped through. Seriously how many people came into the office in a day? And the woman couldn’t be bothered with eye contact.
Lori looked up from her page and stared at Jude with a bored expression. She was perhaps considering how to do her job without standing from her desk.
“Detective Bell may be available,” she said tapping her pencil on her teeth and again looking at her magazine.
“Bell?” Jude asked not missing the connection to Rosemary.
“Yes, Kurt Bell. He ran for a sandwich across the way but should be… oh there is he now.”
The glass door opened and brought with it a gust of hot wind. Kurt Bell held a paper sack in one hand and beat-up novel in the other. When he saw both women staring at him, he stopped.
“Somethin’ happen?” he asked, looking at Lori.
“The press,” Lori said in that distasteful way that Clayton had often described to Jude.
Detective Bell smirked. He had ten years on Jude, his tanned face showing the early lines of middle-age. He wore a white shirt that needed a wash over black slacks, and still maintained a full head of black hair, shot with only a few grays. Overall Jude found him handsome in a sloppy sort of way.
“Must be low on the totem pole if you’re lookin’ for a story around these parts,” he said letting the door swing closed. “Follow me.”