Page 54 of What We Don't Say: Part Two

“Text me when you’re back at the house,” he says.

“I will.”

He closes the door after I’m settled, then waits beside the car while I start the engine and buckle my seat belt. The headlights wash over him when I pull out of the space, his hands tucked into his coat pockets and his shoulders slightly hunched against the cold.

At the edge of the lot, I glance in the rearview mirror.

Dash is still there.

When my car turns toward the house, he starts walking back in the direction we came from, toward campus, the west lot, and the path he has been taking for weeks without telling me.

Dash

The grocery cart starts telling on me somewhere between produce and the bakery counter.

There are apples in it because Callie eats them when she’s grading and forgets they count as food. There is the coffee creamer she pretends not to prefer, the ginger tea Mara said settles her stomach, the crackers she keeps in her desk like an emergency plan, and the good yogurt from the expensive brand she only buys when someone else puts it in the refrigerator first.

I stand in the aisle with one hand on the cart handle and the other around a loaf of bread still warm through the paper sleeve, realizing the house has adjusted itself around her with less resistance than I have.

It has been almost three months since Calliope arrived at Oakhaven with one suitcase, a locked-down personnel file, and eyes that measured every exit before she sat down. It has been nearly seven weeks since she moved into the lockoff behind my house, and the place has stopped feeling empty in ways I don’t let myself examine too closely.

There are annotated articles stacked on the little table by the extension door now. A chipped blue mug from her old office lives beside my sink more often than it lives on her side. Her scent catches in the house in quiet places, honeyed pear and vanilla tea, faintest near the mudroom, stronger when she forgets to close the kitchen door behind her. I should be more careful with how much I like that.

By the time I get home, the late-afternoon sun has gone gold across the kitchen windows. Callie is already there, standing at the island with her phone faceup beside an open notebook. She doesn't hear me come in at first. Her thumb rests over the screen, frozen there, and her other hand is closed around the edge of the counter so tightly the knuckles have gone pale. The scarf around her shoulders has slipped enough to show the edge of the bite at her shoulder, the old mark half-hidden by soft green fabric.

The sight of it tightens something in my chest. I don’t know the story behind that mark, and I won’t invent one when every guess would only turn her pain into something about my anger. I only know Callie touches that place when her phone rattles her, and the reflex makes me want to make the room gentler around her.

I set the grocery bags on the counter with enough sound to announce myself without startling her too badly. “I got the breadfrom the place near the library,” I say, keeping my voice low and my hands busy with the first bag. “They had the oat one you liked last week.”

Callie locks her phone before turning it over. The movement is small, but I have learned the difference between privacy and panic. She gives me a smile a second later, and it is almost convincing until her scent shifts under it, pear gone bruised at the edges, tea cooled to something thin.

“You keep buying groceries like you’re feeding a seminar,” she says, reaching for the reusable bag closest to her. The words are mild, and her hands still shake when she pulls out the apples, so I let the mildness stand.

“I’ve seen what happens when you and Mara decide pizza is a vegetable.” I put the creamer in the refrigerator and keep my back half-turned so she has time to breathe. “Besides, I was low on a few things.”

“You don’t eat this yogurt.” She holds up the carton, and this smile is smaller but real enough to loosen the worst of the tightness between my ribs. “You called it suspiciously cheerful.”

“I said the packaging was cheerful.” I take the carton from her when she offers it, our fingers brushing for half a second before she pulls back. The contact is brief enough to pretend accidental and warm enough that I feel it under my skin after the fridge door closes. “The yogurt itself has done nothing to offend me.”

Her laugh slips out before she can stop it.

It isn't loud. It barely lasts. But it is unguarded, and it changes the room. Callie looks startled by the sound, as if laughter has become a language she's surprised to find she still speaks. I look down into the grocery bag because watching her too openly feels like taking something, and I need both hands on ordinary tasks until I trust my face again.

“That was a terrible defense,” she says, still soft around the mouth.

“I’ll draft a better one before dinner.” I hand her the tea instead of looking at her shoulder, though the mark has not stopped calling for my anger. “Mara said she’s stopping by tonight?”

“She has papers from the curriculum committee and pizza from the place that puts too much basil on everything.” Callie slides the tea into the cabinet where her things have slowly begun to live beside mine. She hesitates after closing it, her fingers lingering on the wood. “She asked if you wanted to join us.”

“I’d like that,” I say, because I would. Because Mara makes Callie laugh in a way I can't yet reach, and I would sit through any amount of basil to hear it again.

Callie nods, then reaches for the last bag. She moves through the kitchen more easily than she did in the beginning, when every drawer seemed to require permission and every cup of coffee came with an apology. Now she knows where the plates are. She knows which cabinet sticks. She has opinions about the terrible pan I refuse to replace because it belonged to my grandmother, and she has never once mocked the little labels on my spice jars, though Mara has done it twice with impressive commitment.

Watching her put away groceries should not make me ache.

It does.

Later, in my campus office, I close the door and open the messages I have been telling myself are professional due diligence.