The PowWow

She called it discussing the case.

We both knew it wasn't only that. We had been using that language for a while now. After telling each other we cared for each other, loved each other, things had proceeded, but so slowly it could be seen as moving backward

I was still carrying her closing me out at the diner.

I wasn't angry. I hadn't pulled back, and I wouldn't. I had asked a real question with real feeling behind it and received a professional answer. A redirection. I had put it in the filing cabinet. The filing cabinet was getting full.

I knocked on her door anyway. Because of course I did.

She opened it in the off-duty version of herself. Which was always a treat for me.

I had learned this version over eight months — the particular way Rachel Stryker existed when nobody was evaluating her work or presence. The professional architecture was set aside, the badge not doing its load-bearing work. The woman underneath the detective was present and visible and genuine in a way that was, if I was being honest with myself, considerably more disorienting than the detective version because the professional version I knew what to expect.

Dark jeans. A soft shirt that had been chosen for comfort rather than effect. Her hair down, which she did at the end of days and not the beginning of them, which told me she had already decided the day was over and this was something else.

The charcuterie board was on the coffee table. The wine was open. This was serious. The cheeses and meats came out for the special occasions. My old friend, Dread, decided to pay me a visit.

"Levi," she said.

"Hey," I said.

There is not an emotional high I can think of that hits higher than her saying my name. I came in.

We talked about the case first. This was honest — the case was real and it mattered and there was genuine territory to cover. The Riel Foundation thread, what Curtis had found and what it connected to.

The departure of the presence from Vale, the quality of it, the absence of resistance that had been wrong. What Jacob was holding and not yet saying, or what I suspected. She accepted that, knowing Jacob as well as she did. He would move, when the time was right.

"Something that can ignore the authority of God," I said. Quietly. The way you say things that are still settling.

Rachel looked at me. Then at her wine glass. "That's a sentence with weight in it."

"Yeah," I said.

She nodded. Turned it over with the methodical attention. "What does Jeremiah say?"

"Haven't been yet. That's tomorrow."

She nodded again. She was here, fully, talking about the case, but just being here with me. Dread left, bored probably, but his cousin arrived. Uncertainty sat down with me and gobbled a grape.

The board went mostly untouched between us. The wine was good. The room had a warmth that kept the chill of an October evening outside, a world away from her eyes, her smile, the way she seemed relaxed and engaged. These times with her were my favorite and they seemed to be absent lately, so I was elated to have more time like this. However, the charcuterie board was for special occasions. Uncertainty reached inside my chest and began to flick its fingers against my heart.

We talked for forty minutes, maybe fifty, maybe more, I was lost in a haze of warmth, comfort, and a sudden anxiety. The case waned in our conversation, and she leaned against me on the couch. I thought about opening another bottle if she had one.

Then she kissed me.

Not tentatively. Not as a question, not the exploratory offering of someone who wasn't sure yet. The certainty of someone who had been making a decision for a long time and had arrived at the end of the making.

My first instinct was to respond in kind. And I did. My heart was suddenly hammering.

This instinct lasted approximately two seconds.

My second instinct — arriving in the space that followed, in the brief interior negotiation of a man who loved this woman and wanted her, was a realization that something was not aligned.

She pulled back slightly. Looked at me. Then she reached for the buttons of my shirt, her hands certain, her expression open in a way that was entirely new. The professional curtain was gone completely and underneath it was a wanting that was breathtaking. It was also, not quite right.

I caught her hands.

Gently. Completely.

"Hey," I said, my voice heavy with breathing. "What are you doing?"

She looked at me and something moved through her expression. I couldn’t define it at first, then it clicked — it wasn’t just one thing. There was a lot of things moving behind her eyes.

"Our relationship isn't stuck," she said. “I am.”

“I need my control. I need my distance, but I want to be with you so much. You’ve been so wonderful to me, so patient and I’ve…just coasted. I want to show you how much I care for you."

I looked at her. I shifted my hands from her wrists and took her hands, then gently kissed her fingers. “What’s wrong?”

She looked down, then back up and I saw vulnerability. I saw her walls completely down. She was broken and she needed more than tape or glue.

Her voice was barely above a whisper. “I was married right out of high school.”

My breath caught before I could stop it and her hands tightened on mine.

“I was pregnant too.” She stopped and took a cleansing breath.

I couldn’t find words, so I did the best I could to just listen.

“I need you to know, one of the things I admire about you and your family is you are so rooted in God. I need you to know I was there too.”

Tears were coursing down her face and she sobbed. “Three months in, I lost my baby.”

“Dear Lord.” I managed.

Her hand escaped mine and she rested it on my chest. “Two months later, my husband was diagnosed with brain cancer. In one year, I went from happy and faithful to bereft and betrayed.”

I put my hand over hers, willing her to get it out. Lord, give her the strength she feels she lost.

“I became a cop, because I found a place where I could build a place for me to exist, that I could control. Eventually, maybe two more years, I came to a peace with God, but I couldn’t understand why He took them.”

She looked up at me. “I built my fortress, and then you came. With your little quips and your smile and your complete disregard for the authority I had built in my castle. You ripped down my walls, shredded them without even knowing it. I fell in love with you and then you say it in the car that day.”

She sniffed and gave a tiny smile. “Jacob would say God shined His countenance upon me.”I echoed her smile. Yeah, Jacob would say that.

“I want to love you, but I can’t get out of my way. God took my husband and my child. Maybe I don’t deserve that happiness.”

“Rachel.” I said, pressing her hand into my chest. “God doesn’t do those things because you deserve it or not. It’s not for us to understand. This is our test of faith. You came back to God, showing faith when everything was taken from you. Perhaps now is the time to show your faith when you're given everything.”

She gave a bit of a characteristic smirk. “Not everything.”

A fire bloomed in my heart again, but I thought of Jacob’s stoicism and quenched that fire as fast as I could.

I kissed her instead, slowly and intently, then drew back. “In time, my love. Just not now. I’m not ever going anywhere. I love you and I will be with you forever.”

“What about me being married and a widow?”

I smiled. “The old testament says that should your husband pass, his brother should provide for you.”

“No way, Grant’s brother is a dick.”

I laughed, I couldn’t help it and she laughed too. I gathered her in my arms and leaned back on the couch and she moved closer to me and got comfortable.

“In Christ, I am Grant’s brother too.”

She snuggled into me. “Thank you God, thank you for this man.”

The board went uneaten. The wine finished slowly. The evening slowly moved on.

It was late when I stood to go.

She followed me to the door. Leaned against the frame with a different posture than I’d ever seen. It was purposeful. It was, Lord help me, sexy.

She looked at me like that for a moment, then flowed up to me and kissed me lightly on the lips.

"Thank you," she said. Quietly.

"Any time," I said. “Every time.”

She was broken, in her own eyes, but with the Lord’s glue, she would heal. I bowed my head and gave thanks and prayed I would be that glue for Him and for her.

I smiled all the way home.