6. Calista

6

CALISTA

" W hat do you mean no one has availability?" I ask my assistant, Becca, over the phone as I try to scrape crusted-on food from the plates next to the sink.

"I called every cleaning company in a twenty-mile radius. It's Friday, Cal. They're all booked out. Earliest I can get you some help that has any decent reviews is next week. But for today, the best I can do is book you a room at a luxury oceanfront hotel for a thousand a night."

Becca has been my assistant for six years. She's efficient, tenacious, and productive. If she tells me there are no cleaning companies available, I believe her. I'm about to tell her to book me that hotel when Mom starts to cough upstairs.

Can I really peel out of here and leave her alone?

I shake my head. And how bad of me is it that my first assumption is I'll leave her here while I go stay somewhere nice? Didn't even occur to me to take her with me.

Everything in the house is dirty, dusty, or broken. Including my mom.

I managed to cobble together enough cleaning supplies that I can at least wash some dishes and plates for dinner. I'll get food delivered. The kitchen is bad, but a step shy of a complete hygiene hazard. It's taken me a solid hour to scrape all the crusty shit off plates and dump the mold growing on top of cold cups of coffee, but I now have enough to get a solid first load through the dishwasher.

"I appreciate you trying for me. Yes, to the cleaning company next week. But if we have to wait, let's be selective. Women only. But maybe they should have experience with hoarders." I hate to admit it, but I also worry that a cleaning company might show up and balk at just how much there is to do.

"Oh, Cal," she says. Her voice ripe with sympathy. "It's that bad?"

I don't like the sympathy. It never sits well with me. I don't ever want to be poor Calista Moray.

"Nothing I can't handle."

"How's your mom?"

"Listen, I gotta go, Becs. Mom needs something. But let me know the details for the cleaning company. Oh, and ask Freddie if he finished the diagnostic for the water pollution control start-up. And get Heather to send me?—"

"—the Peterson file. I know. Go, do what you need to do."

"You know me so well. And I will. Bye."

I go to switch off my phone, but I see the message from him .

Hiding from me won't work, Calista . I'll find you wherever you run.

There's usually a longer gap between messages, and the band around my chest tightens.

So, I make another call. I tug the sleeves of my sweater down to fight off the cold.

"What can I do for you, Calista?" Victor Orson's gruff voice carries over the line. He sounds exactly how you'd expect the stereotype of a private investigator to sound. Gruff, temperamental, borderline annoyed by the intrusion.

"I wondered if you'd had a chance to look into the list I sent you." At his request, I'd gone through the list of former employees with Andrew, my head of human resources. We'd sorted them into those who'd left on good terms, which was nearly everyone. And three people who had not.

"Working on it."

"I'm going to need a little more than that," I say.

"Fine. I found addresses for all three. Ruled out the woman. She's moved on. Got a better job. Getting paid more. Got a new boyfriend and a new haircut. She's got no reason to still be pissed at you."

I bite down on my lower lip. "Those feel like superficial reasons to rule her out."

"Happy people are too busy being happy to ruin other people's lives," Orson says.

He makes a good point.

"The two guys are possibles. Neither has found work, and one of them posted about going for multiple job interviews and losing out to female candidates, which he thinks is some kind of affirmative action. The other has had to move back home after being unable to make rent. I'm digging into both of them. I've also sent a guy to Tahoe to get the scoop on Walt Timberlake."

I roll my eyes. "Walt has more money than God. He's too busy with all the women who climb into his hot tub looking for a rich husband to worry about me."

"Still," Orson says. "He continually tries to take credit for your success. Might be pissed he isn't getting recognized for it."

This is true.

I met him at a networking event. Was introduced to him by the head of operations I'd hired. We talked about my business. He even went so far as to offer me money. He also offered to double that amount if I'd slip upstairs with him to his bedroom for an hour. An indecent proposal, he called it.

Asshole.

I turned him down flat and immediately stayed as far away from him as I could. But he continued to perpetuate the myth that he'd been influential in helping me establish the strategy and direction of my business after a "chance meeting" and regretted being so philanthropic with his advice instead of asking for a cut.

"Fine. But it's imperative he doesn't find out you're sniffing around. I don't want to do a single thing that will bring him back into my orbit. And for the record, it's been a long time since that one meeting." I was transparent with Orson about what had transpired. "He's had plenty of time to try this kind of shit if he wanted to."

"Understood."

We say our goodbyes, and then I hang up the phone.

I should make some other calls. I need to make sure the team I put in place for the Wilder's Bank work is ready to hit the ground running on Monday, given I now have the CEO on board.

Instead, I find myself heading upstairs. I open the door to Mom's bedroom where I find her watching TV. The room smells musty, and now that I'm really paying attention, it looks as though Mom hasn't washed her hair in a long time.

"Should I open the window for a minute, to let some fresh air in?"

She shakes her head, glassy eyes focused on whatever she's watching. "No. Gets too cold. Then everything'll get damp."

"Mom, it's already cold in here. I'll turn the heating on."

Mom shakes her head. "The heating system broke."

"When?" I ask.

She shrugs. "A while back."

I add getting a heating engineer out to service the system or whatever to my mental list. "Do you need anything?" I ask.

Mom glances up from the television, then returns to watch some TV judge award a thousand bucks for a busted front door. "I'm okay. You can go."

I do as she says, but once I step foot outside, I sigh.

Her words brush up against an invisible wound.

You can go.

You're unwanted, Calista.

I never fit in at school. Too clever. Too nerdy. Too indifferent to all the cool kids and the jocks. I had an old laptop that had been my father's, and when I closed the curtains to stop the daylight glare on my screen, I built a world I felt safe in.

Part of me is ready to just take Mom at her word. But the other part of me yearns for…something.

I pull the door open to the hallway closet and reach for the spare bedding. It's dusty and smells a little. I head to the basement and throw it all into the washing machine as I resolutely plan how I'm going to make tonight bearable.

Next, I'm going to get a ride to the store and pick up groceries before they close. Perhaps only buy enough food to go meal by meal, given the state of the fridge. As I make my way back up the stairs, there's a knock at the door.

I pull the door open, and Ti stands outside, multiple bags in each hand. "Brought you supplies," he says gruffly. The words rumble through me, reverberating in my chest.

He never used to sound so…commanding.

"Ti, I never told you about that so you would go?—"

"Just move out of the way, Cal." Wrinkles mar his otherwise smooth brown skin.

I do as he says. His presence in Mom's home is too much. I remember when he'd come over after school. He was all arms and legs and hadn't grown into the bulk he is now. He'd bring me his mom's homemade jerky and my mom would make us hot chocolate.

With a confident stride, he goes straight into the kitchen and places the bags on the floor.

When I follow him, I see his shocked stare as he looks around. "Shit. I had no idea it had gotten this bad."

"Yeah. Me neither," I say. I don't even have the energy to be mad at him right now.

He tugs off his thick, lined leather jacket.

"What are you doing?" I ask.

He looks at me like I just asked the most ridiculous question in the world, then glances at the cleaning supplies I've assembled on the counter. "I'm gonna clean this health hazard up for your mom."

"I don't need your?—"

"I wasn't offering to help you. I'm doing it because your mom doesn't deserve to live in this shithole. If you say you don't need my help, I might just tie you to that chair and get on with it by myself. I'm not leaving just because your stubborn, ungrateful ass can't just say, ‘Thank you, Vex.'"

"Vex? That's your name now?"

"Ti. Whatever."

I breathe deeply for a second. I'd be foolish to turn down a second set of hands. "This doesn't mean we're friends."

"Maybe you and I just have a very different definition of what friendship is. Now, you want to tell me what your plan was when you pulled all this cleaning stuff together, or you want me to just get started on the kitchen?"

I'm ungrateful, but I lost so much when Ti did what he did. Wait… "Vex or Ti?"

"Whichever you want."

"What are you called most today?"

His eyes narrow on me. "Vex. Only my family calls me Ti, and given you just pointed out we aren't even friends, maybe you should call me ‘Vex.'"

"Fine, Vex ." The word sits heavy on my tongue. It's a brutal reminder of what happened to me in my brief association with the club.

I never told him what happened when Cue Ball and the rest of his biker friends showed up to teach me a lesson. I just told Vex I'd hate him forever, then ran. But now I see the pile of groceries by his feet and the way he looked out for my mom in his own way the last decade.

"Thank you for the groceries. If you tell me how much I owe you, I can?—"

"Shut up, Calista. Just tell me what needs cleaning."

I tug open the fridge. As I expected, it's dirty but cold. There are ancient half-filled bottles of pickles and moldy food. "I think we're going to need to clean this out to be able to put any of that food away."

Ti leans close to me and looks inside the fridge. I feel his breath on my cheek, and he smells good. All low notes and heat. "On it. Then what?"

I stand up straight and close the fridge door just to put space between us. "My old bedroom is beyond the kind of help that would get it ready for tonight. So, I'm going to clean up the living room, sleep on the couch. Would be nice if I wasn't worrying about what's in the sofa cushions. Oh, and the heating isn't working, and I'm not sure when the fireplace last got swept."

"Got it." He reaches for his jacket. "I'm gonna swing by my house first. Got an industrial vacuum cleaner from when I renovated and a power washer that might help with some of those pots if I take ‘em out into the yard. Can clean out the inside of the fridge the same way if I unplug it and drag it out."

I itch to put my hand on his forearm. It's thick and corded and strong, but I resist. "That sounds like a great idea. Thank you."

He zips up the coat and pulls his keys from the pocket. "Does your mom know you're doing all this? Like, moving all her stuff around, throwing shit out?"

"It's just mess. I told her I'm cleaning up a bit."

Vex rolls his eyes. "What exactly did you tell her?"

I think back to the start of our conversation.

How I never come, only send money and flowers.

She said my room would need a little reorganizing to clear the bed.

How she wouldn't get a cleaner because she thinks I stole all the money I gave her.

"I told her I was going to get caught up on the house a bit. And she said I should get groceries because she was low."

Vex tucks a piece of hair behind my ear, something he's never done before. I'd remember something as important as that. But I can't waste a moment processing why.

Especially when he realizes what he's done and pulls his hand away like I burned him.

"Go upstairs. Tell your mom what you're doing. In detail. What you're doing is kind, but she might not want you to."

I huff and cross my arms. "I have to sleep here tonight. And I can't eat and sleep if it looks like this."

Vex nods. "I agree. You can't. But whatever this is with your mom, it's long-term, babe. Depression. Alzheimer's. Dementia. Straight-up hoarding. I'm not a doctor or a psychologist, so it's pointless trying to guess. You can't live like this and not see it. Let's take her along with us in stages, yeah?"

"Those are some big illness words."

He gestures around the kitchen. "To describe some big life changes. Go talk to her, babe."

"Okay. You're right."

And I'm halfway up the stairs before I realize he called me babe .

Twice.