Page 17 of Echoes in the Storm
She weaves her way through the small round tables—all wooden with mismatched chairs—to the cabinet displaying the baked goods. A couple of people greet her as she passes, and I hang back a few steps so I can watch her interact.
It’s curious, the way she clearly knows so many people in her small community, and yet her home life demonstrates she’s probably one of the loneliest people I’ve ever met.
“Do you have particular tastes?” she asks as we stop at the counter. “Or are you willing to try the apple and ginger?” Cammie nudges me with her elbow, a smile reaching her eyes as she looks up at me.
“Whatever you suggest,” I answer.
She goes ahead and orders, remembering how I like my coffee when she picks a flat white for me. Our drinks come in brightly coloured takeaway cups, the muffins individually bagged in brown paper, ready to go. Cammie walks ahead as we leave the café, oblivious to the sneaky stares we get as I follow. I glance back at the people, unassuming types including an older lady with a blue rinse, a white-collared man who stands at the leaner by the front window reading the morning paper, and a mother of twins, who watches us walk out as she absently talks to one of her children. Nobody’s threatening. Nobody seems to offer ill will. Simply people from a town small enough that everybody knows each other’s history and habits.
People who look out for one another.
People like I used to be.
Since I’ve been back in civilian life, I’ve retreated into my head, building a carefully constructed thick shell around me. The shit that happened overseas affected me worse than I’ve ever given it credit for. It changed me so significantly that there wasn’t much of the old me left inside to recognise the difference.
I’m a completely new guy. And the new guy is a douche.
“So,” I start as Cammie leads us past the car toward the intersection. “You mentioned you spend a lot of time in theatre. Are you a nurse? A doctor?” I swallow back the unease wedging in my throat at being the one to initiate personal conversation. With a woman who gets under my skin, no less. But hey, if I can practice with her, maybe it’s the first step towards being the old non-douchey Duke again?
Fingers crossed.
She laughs at my question, handing me the bags of muffins so she can use her free hand to push the pedestrian button. “Not that kind of theatre, although I can see why you thought that with how I said it and all. That’s kind of funny actually. I should tell Mum, she’d get a laugh out of it. Me: a doctor. Like that would happen.”
Once more with the runaway tongue.
“I meant thespian theatre,” she continues. “The drama club in town here do one major show a year, and some smaller street-performance style events in between. I’m part of the crew.”
“The crew. Like backstage?”
“Yeah.” She flashes me a sweet smile as the walk signal buzzes.
I shake my head in disbelief as we start across the road. If somebody had shown me a picture of Cammie and asked me what I thought her pastime was, I would have stabbed a guess at one of those YouTube makeup bloggers you see chicks sharing all over Facebook.
Acting? Backstage? Never would have picked it.
“Explains the black clothing, I guess.”
She drops a short “Ha” before taking a deep breath to prepare for her next verbal marathon. “Not quite. I’ve always been into that kind of look. I was a Goth in high school, if you can believe it. I guess it sort of spilled over into the rest of my life; but I suppose you could tell that by my house, huh?” She peers up at me as we approach the low timber railings that surround the local parkland. “Although, it’s not just my house. I co-own it with my ex, Jared.” Her face falls, and I get a sense thatthisis the stuff she said was bothering her before. “He wants me to sell it so we can wrap up our separation.”
“I take it you don’t want to?” I offer her my hand so she can steady herself as she climbs over the chain linking the bollards.
“No. I love that house. I’d stay there forever if I could. It holds so many special memories, things I don’t want to let go of, although …”
“Although?”
She sighs as she takes a seat at the picnic table tucked beneath a sprawling oak. “He’s right about one thing: it’s not healthy, the dependency I have on keeping those memories alive.”
“The only memory you should ever forget is a bad one.” Because, fuck, don’t I know that?
“Anderson, Piata! Somebody fucking answer me!”
I shake my head clear and focus on tearing my paper bag perfectly in the centre so I can spread it out to make a kind of plate.
“That’s the problem,” Cammie says, pulling her muffin out and dumping it on top of her bag, crumbs everywhere. “No matter how good the memories are, they all link into one hell of a bad one.”
“And you choose to hang on to it?” I ask as I lean over and take a bite, hoping she’ll reveal a little more about what exactly happened to her.
She wasn’t wrong, though: these muffins are good shit.