Watching Trin by Freya Barker
Chapter 12
Bodhi
“Tuck, give me hand getting the groceries inside.”
I look over my shoulder to where the kid is lounging on the couch as I pull the front door open for Trin. Leaning in to grab the bags she’s carrying; I take the opportunity to lay a kiss on her.
“Gross.”
Trin pulls back as Tucker pushes past us out the door.
“I hope I got everything,” she says, dodging around me down the hall.
I follow her to the kitchen and dump the bags on the counter. I’d offered to cook tonight and added a few things to her list.
“Everything quiet here?”
I haven’t heard Vic get up yet. She got in a little after eight, grabbed something to eat, and disappeared upstairs. But I have a feeling Trin isn’t referring to her sister.
“He’s still napping,” I reassure her, knowing it was her father she was asking about.
Bruce has been mostly calm—confused and lost, but calm—other than this morning when Trin discovered she was out of Pop-Tarts, which did not make him happy. Luckily, he was fairly easily distracted with a couple of frozen waffles and the prospect of tinkering with the dirt bike after breakfast.
Trin found the manual for the thing and we spent yesterday and this morning taking it apart piece by piece, labeling every part carefully. It’s coated with rust and will need a good cleaning before we rebuild it. I’m actually having a good time working on it. The old man is surprisingly knowledgeable—I guess some things stick better than others—and although Tucker may not say much, I hope working with his grandpa on this project will be a good memory to look back on one day.
The kid comes in hauling another few bags and dumps them next to the others.
“Are there more?” I ask him.
“A couple.”
I fetch the remaining bags from Trin’s Jeep and help her put the stuff away, while Tuck resumes his sprawl on the couch. It looks like she managed to get everything I need for the curry I had in mind for dinner. I leave the yogurt and spices on the counter and start peeling the ginger root for the marinade.
“I wanted to ask you something,” Trin says in a low voice. “It’s about that car in the river.”
Surprised, I put down my knife and face her.
“What do you want to know?”
Her hands are restlessly folding a grocery bag into a tiny package.
“Well…I read a short report on the recovery in the local newspaper, and I’ve been toying with the idea of a writing an article.”
“About the recovery?”
“That would be part of it, I guess, but more so about the who, the why, and the how. An investigative story.”
I cross my arms over my chest and lean a hip against the counter, indicating she has my attention. To be honest, I’ve been wondering about the wreck—but more specifically the body—myself.
“Not sure how I can be helpful.”
“I was going to get in touch with the reporter to see if there’s any more he could tell me, but I haven’t been able to get hold of him. In his article he mentions a partial license plate number but reports the police have asked that not be made public. I’m hoping to learn something that might give me a place to start. I know that the body is with the medical examiner awaiting autopsy, but I figure in the meantime the car might help me to pin down a timeline.”
The hands that were busy mangling the plastic bag earlier are now tugging at the hem of her shirt. Clearly, she’s uneasy asking me straight out, so I help her out.
“You want to know what I might’ve seen?”
I chuckle at her eager nod.
“I do, but I also feel a bit guilty, maybe, putting you on the spot.”
“You’re not. I have no problem telling you what I’ve observed—which by the way, isn’t a whole lot—but…” I glance over to the living room where Tuck at least has the appearance of being absorbed in some game he’s playing. I lower my voice. “Maybe you and I can talk tonight? I don’t want to run the chance of your son hearing.”
“Of course,” she immediately agrees.
“I don’t mean to be dismissive, but some of what we see in this line of work can be pretty gruesome. The stuff of nightmares. So we tend to shove them to a remote corner of the mind and, other than perhaps with colleagues who were present, never talk about them again.”
It’s the only way I know to keep myself sane. Observe, label, and file away. The fire department has counselors you could talk to if a call was particularly traumatic, but most of us just tough it out. We may stop in at the Irish, where most of the town’s first responders congregate. We’ll have a few beers, a couple of laughs, and hopefully at the end of it can go to sleep without the experience hounding us in our dreams. Because tomorrow there’ll be another call, another trauma, another ghost to add to an already impressive collection.
Trin puts a hand on my arm.
“I get it. It may not be an everyday occurrence like it is for you, but I’ve seen more than my share of messed-up shit.”
Guess that’s true. She mentioned traveling around Africa, chasing an illegal poaching story that wouldn’t have been a cakewalk. I know journalists in war-torn countries are confronted with atrocities all the time. You develop a tolerance for it—cold as that may sound—a way of coping so you can get through another day.
“I bet you have.”
She goes up on her toes and lifts her face for a kiss. I gladly comply until I hear her dad calling at the top of the stairs.
“Margaret!”
“It’s okay, I’ve got him,” Vic calls down right after.
I turn back to chop my ginger when Trin bumps me with her hip.
“Tell me how I can help?”
I get her to cut the chicken breasts and thighs she brought home into chunks while I finish the yogurt marinade. The whole thing is thrown together in a Ziploc bag and put in the fridge where it can sit for a couple of hours.
While the chicken marinates, I head back outside with Tuck to work on the bike some more. Anything to distract me from the image of that body, gently swaying in the current.
* * *
Trin
“We’re going to have to grab the rest of this tomorrow morning.”
Vic comes walking out of the bathroom with a plastic bag holding most of Pops’s toiletries. I already have most of his clothes packed. We’re supposed to be at Memory Lane at noon tomorrow. The plan is for Pops to have lunch there while we set his things up in his new room. It’s been a challenge to pick items that still hold meaning for him and will fit in the space. The only furniture that can go with him is the old recliner he’s attached to. Other than that, it’s family pictures, a few books he still likes to flip through, and his favorite coffee mug. Sad that a once full life has been reduced to a handful of items.
I don’t know how he’ll react. This house, which holds so many memories for us, has become somewhat of a prison for him. A place he wants to escape from. It breaks my heart. Hopefully he’ll be more at peace at Memory Lane, but we’ll just have to see how it goes.
From downstairs I can hear some kind of gun battle on TV. Bodhi offered to watch The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, with Pops. A classic he’s seen many times already. It’s a long-ass movie too—over three hours, I believe—and I warned Bodhi Pops will probably fall asleep halfway through.
Tuck is in his bedroom. I took him to his follow-up appointment this afternoon and he was cleared to go back to school tomorrow. He wanted me to keep him home for the rest of the week and wasn’t too happy when I wouldn’t consider it. I know he enjoyed himself these past few days tinkering with that bike with Bodhi and Pops, but those two won’t be here after tomorrow anyway, and he’s already missed too much school.
“What about this?”
I pull out Pops’s dress uniform, which is carefully kept in plastic, and show it to Vic who plops down on the edge of the mattress.
“Christ. I don’t know. I don’t know if he ever looks at it.”
“We can keep it here for now and if he asks about it, we can always take it later,” I suggest, hanging it back. “Maybe we can bring this.” I reach for the shelf above and pull down his helmet he got to keep after he retired. “We could hang it on his wall?”
I place the helmet in Vic’s outstretched hand.
“You know…I used to sneak in here and try it on,” she confesses. “See what I’d look like as a firefighter.” She snorts. “It seemed important at the time. Now I know people don’t give a rat’s ass what I look like as long as I save their butt.”
She strokes her fingers over the ridges on the helmet before handing it back.
“Bring it. Even if Pops doesn’t notice it’s there, it’ll be a reminder to us of who he was.”
I set the helmet on top of the packed bag I’ll leave at the back of his closet and sit down beside my sister on the bed, putting my arm around her.
“I miss Pops. He always seemed larger than life—a giant—and yet he was always so gentle,” I reminisce, a lump in my throat.
“I know. It’s hard to believe it’s the same man.”
She drops her head on my shoulder and for a while we just sit there, holding on to each other as we get lost in our own thoughts.
“Is everything okay?”
My head snaps around to find Bodhi standing in the doorway. I let Vic go and wipe at my eyes.
“Yeah. We’re fine.”
Clearly not convinced, his gaze bounces from me to Vic and back. My sister is doing her own share of wiping.
“Your father fell asleep in his chair. I just wanted to check the coast was clear before I get him upstairs.”
“I’ll give you a hand,” Vic offers, and slips by Bodhi, who is still focused on me.
“Sure you’re good?”
“I’ll be fine,” I reassure him.
He nods and heads downstairs, while I quickly check the room to make sure there isn’t anything visibly out of place. Then I duck into Tuck’s room to check on him.
The lights are on but he’s fast asleep, his earbuds still in and his iPad facedown on his chest. He must’ve shed his jeans at some point, only wearing boxers and a T-shirt. I carefully remove the tablet and the earbuds, setting them on the nightstand, before covering him with the quilt. I sneak a quick kiss to his forehead, grabbing the opportunity when it presents itself, and flick off the light as I close the door.
“I’ve got him,” Vic announces as they come up the stairs with Pops. “I’m gonna hit the sack as well.”
She’s going into work at seven, as usual, but was able to book two hours off around lunch. Long enough for us to get Pops to his new home.
It’s ten o’clock when I walk into the kitchen and I stifle a yawn.
“Maybe you should go to bed as well,” Bodhi says behind me.
“Not yet.” I pull open the fridge and lean in. “Want a beer?”
“Sure.”
I grab one from the door and hand it to him before going back for the half bottle of wine I started a few weeks ago. Tonight feels like a wine night to me.
Bodhi’s already on the couch when I walk in with my glass. He found some music station on TV which has soft rock playing in the background.
“Come sit,” he orders, patting the seat beside him.
The moment my ass hits the pillow, he lifts his arm around my shoulders and tucks me close. This feels suspiciously like a date and it seems out of place to bring up what was probably not a fun experience. It turns out I don’t need to.
“So, let’s get this over with so we can get to the good part.”
I twist my neck to look up at him.
“Good part?”
His mouth stretches in a wolfish grin as he looks down at me.
“Yeah, the part where I’m going to kiss you like I’ve been dying to do. Maybe I’ll even try to feel you up a little.”
“Are you always this forward?” I ask casually, despite the sudden heat rushing through my body.
Interestingly he seems to need a moment to think about that.
“I don’t think so. You’re bringing out a whole new part of me.”
I hold back the smile that wants to break free at his words but the urge quickly disappears as he launches into a description of the recovery. From what he’s telling me, whoever was in that car had been there for a long time already. I’ll have to do some research on the speed of decomposition under water when I get the chance. A full body shiver runs down me when my mind conjures up an image of a skeleton still strapped in the seat belt.
“As far as the car goes. I’m not sure of the color, but it was a Honda Civic, an older model, maybe 1990 or ’91. Popular around the time I was in high school. It had a Colorado license plate, but only the last three digits were legible—three, one, nine.” He takes a strand of my hair and starts playing with it. “I’m sorry I don’t have more for you.”
I shift slightly angling my body toward him.
“It’s more than I had.”
He moves as well, mirroring my pose, and uses the index finger of his free hand to draw a featherlight line from my chin down to the V of my T-shirt. My body instantly responds and the hardening of my nipples does not escape him.
“Is it enough to do anything with?”
I grin at him.
“You have a lot to learn about me,” I tell him smugly. “This is what I do. I take a thread and—piece by piece—unravel the entire story.”
I barely get the last word out when I’m suddenly on my back, covered by Bodhi’s weight as the heat in his eyes sets me on fire.
“I’m a quick study,” he says hoarsely a second before his mouth slams on mine.