Page 32 of Nowhere Good

“Your father said I should come by for a drink.” He glanced around the bar again—no sign of Ron Dyer, so he slid onto one of the stools. “Hey, so listen, I’m sorry about last night. About the warrant. I just felt like we couldn’t risk losing evidence.”

“You mean you couldn’t risk me destroying it.”

“Well…”

Claire resisted his gaze, her cheeks spotted with red. “S’all good. Lucky for you, I ain’t one to hold a grudge.” She pressed her palms on the counter to stop herself from fidgeting with the glasses. “Besides, you could’ve sent some man in there to rifle through my bedroom, but you asked the only woman. That was decent of you.”

Seth felt his posture relax. Although it didn’t matter how she felt about him, he was oddly relieved she didn’t hate him.

And after what he’d seen at the morgue this morning—Kelsey Campbell’s body, stiff and purpling from livor mortis—it was nice to talk to a living, breathing woman.

“How are you holding up?” he asked. “I’m surprised to see you working after what you saw last night.”

She shrugged half-heartedly. “I’d rather be busy here than wallowing at home, you know?”

“Strong girl.” He hadn’t handled seeing his first dead body well. Then again, it had belonged to his mother.

“Nah, I wouldn’t say that. More like I’m running from the thoughts. Kinda cowardly, if you think about it.”

Her sudden openness read like an invitation, so he rested his elbows on the bar. “What thoughts?”

Claire went quiet. He almost thought she’d back out, but she said, “You ever have a dream where you’re trying to move, but it’s like you’re being weighed down? Like wading through water.”

“Sure, I’ve had that before.”

“Whenever that happens to me, I sorta become lucid. I hate feeling trapped, so my conscience turns on and I try to wake up. When I finally do, I find myself gasping for air like it really happened. But then there’s this peace in knowing it was a dream and I can go about my day. It felt like that when I saw her. For a while afterward, I thought I might be able to wake up. Maybe part of me still feels that way. Maybe if I work and act like everything’s fine, I won’t have to think about how I never will.”

He wasn’t sure what to say, surprised she’d opened up so much. It must’ve caught her off guard too, because embarrassment turned her features rosy. When she smiled, she smiled big—all teeth and gums, and it was beautiful. She shook her head like she felt foolish.

“Sorry, that sounds stupid,” she said.

“No, not at all,” he saved. “I get it. I guess I’ve seen so much now that I forgot what it’s like.”

“I thought I’d seen it all. I mean, I went through hell with Brad. I’d find him nodding off at this abandoned house downtown, where all these addicts would be sleeping on mattresses. I remember thinking, damn, this must be what dead bodies look like. But that was nothing compared to the real thing. I don’t know how you do it.”

Seth felt the words on the tip of his tongue, the rare desire to connect to another person. To tell her how the first body he ever saw was the worst body he ever saw. That it had given him that feeling she described, like a dream he wished he could wake from—but he never did wake up, and he never quite felt that again. On the contrary, every body he saw felt so viscerally real that it cut through any surrealness like a knife. It was his job to stop these things from ever happening. To make up for what he couldn’t stop the first time—the violent murder of his own mother, the only image his brain could never reconcile with. Even now, when he tried to picture it, the flashes of blood on their kitchen tile made him queasy, sick to his stomach, and God, he did wish he could wake up, but—

“Do you think anything happens after?” Claire asked. She peered at him, looking for hope, grounding him back in this bar with her. The moment rattled him. He hadn’t expected to think about his mother, and he hadn’t expected to be shaken by it.

He forced a small smile; he didn’t want to lie. “No, I don’t.”

“Yeah, me neither,” she murmured, slotting the final glass away. “Nice idea, though. Guess that’s what makes life so important. It’s not right for someone to think they can take that from someone else. But you stop them, right? I admire it, actually.”

“I try to.” He had ghosts in his past too, people he couldn’t save. Although he’d just fallen into this job, Kelsey was one of them.

This was nice and all—sitting at this bar, enjoying Claire’s company—but it was not his purpose here.

“That house you mentioned, where the addicts stay,” Seth said. “Where is that?”

“Oh, it’s—”

A gruff voice cut into the moment.

“I’m not interruptin’ your date here, am I?”

Seth backed off, straightening his posture and distancing himself from Claire. Ron cackled and smacked his back. It nearly knocked the wind from his lungs.

“I’m just messin’ with ya, kid. I told ya, no more hard feelings, water under the bridge.” He pointed toward Claire. “Pour us a couple of the good scotches, would ya, Claire Bear?”