Chapter 63

Lucca made the phone call in their office, but the interior doors in their home were thin and hollow. The beginning of the conversation was quiet enough that it was a minute or two before Lucca’s voice grew loud enough to be audible.

Their voice carried, at the best of times; and whatever was in the letter had them angry, and they were not shy about letting their volume show it.

Valerie was unsettled by the anger she heard, and guilty about overhearing. She thought about finding the old pair of headphones Lucca had lent her, and using them to listen to music while she cooked, until she remembered that they were in the office, along with her laptop.

And, if she was being honest with herself, she was curious about what they had to say to Dana.

“You made it my business, unless you think she’s going to do all of this herself?”

There was a pause while Dana spoke, and Lucca’s next reply was a more normal volume; Valerie could not make out the words.

“You sent her here with no warning, no explanation, not even a change of underwear. And now you want her back, but you want to torture her along the way? Like she hasn’t been through enough?”

At the word torture she began to regret that she could hear even half of the conversation. She busied herself flipping through one of Lucca’s cookbooks, Easy Weeknight Dinners, looking for something that they had the ingredients for.

“It’s reckless. She could get hurt. Really hurt.”

Valerie tried to tune out the conversation, but her anxiety was starting to creep back up. It had been mostly dormant since that first, fraught weekend; she realized in a strange way that she had begun to feel safe in Lucca’s home. Tears burned at the corners of her eyes and she felt sick to her stomach thinking about how she only had a night or two left; and then months more in Dana’s keeping.

Judging by Lucca’s behavior with the letter and the tenor of the conversation, she did not think that Dana was going to welcome her back with open arms.

“I’m not going to have any part in this—”

The rest of the sentence was too soft for Valerie to make out. She realized she had been staring at a recipe for a broccoli casserole for several minutes; she skimmed the ingredient list intently. It seemed doable.

The conversation was inaudible for a few more minutes; Valerie started to search out all of the ingredients for the recipe, like Lucca had taught her.

“Dana, this is not okay.”

There were a few more moments of quiet, before Lucca wrenched the office door open. They bypassed the kitchen and stalked to the living room. With no more doors in the way, Valerie could hear their half much more clearly; though for the moment they seemed to be holding their phone at arm’s length, glaring at it, and breathing very intentionally.

The started speaking into it again and Valerie busied herself measuring out the ingredients she would need, each individual component going into its own small bowl in just the right portion.

“Shut up and listen to me. If something happens to her… You know I’m not a violent person. But if she gets hurt, I can’t make any promises about that.”

Valerie blinked softly. She was halfway through measuring out dry mustard powder, and she froze in place. Did Lucca just threaten Dana… for me?

The house’s air conditioner picked that moment to cycle off, and in the sudden still, dead silence, she could hear Dana’s voice, thin and tinny, even from a room away.

“Thanks for that. Are you going to let her decide, or are you going to choose for her?”

Absolute silence followed. She supposed Lucca had ended the call rather than respond to the question. Forced to guessed, she would have surmised that they were letting their anger cool and debating if they wanted to break their phone in half or not.

Lucca stepped into the kitchen while Valerie was measuring out rice.

“How much of that did you hear?” they asked, their voice still carrying notes of anger.

The clatter of steel measuring cup against ceramic bowl gave away that Valerie’s hands were trembling. Valerie knew they were not angry at her, but her own general anxiety and what she had heard through the door had ratcheted her stress level up significantly.

“I…” She started to reply, but she had opened her mouth before actually thinking of a response.

“It’s okay. You’re not in trouble. Anyway, it’s not like you had your ear pressed to the door.”

“I heard… most of what you said. And the last thing Dana said. About choices.”

Lucca sighed.

“Sorry. Maybe I should’ve stayed outside.”

Valerie shrugged in response, and Lucca planted themselves on the bar stool that was normally her seat. They looked over the ingredients she had laid out.

“I don’t know where to start with all of this,” Lucca muttered.

“It’s.. it’s a casserole.”

“No, no. This is fine. Looks good; keep going. I mean… Dana. The letter. That fucking box.”

Valerie laughed, despite herself, the sound heavy with nervousness.

“Yeah.”

“The letter has instructions for you to go home, on Saturday.”

Valerie nodded quietly and barely managed not to cry. She knew her stay was temporary, but from where she stood, the time had gone by much too quickly.

“Okay,” she replied, her voice strangled by the unvoiced sobs.

“Like your meds, the instructions are meant for me,” they continued, anger rising back to the surface. “I’m not supposed to explain or tell you anything.”

Valerie nodded; the words were a gut punch, but not surprising, or even wholly unexpected. Some of her internal turmoil must have shown through in her expression.

“Girl, hey…” Lucca slid off the stool and stepped around the island, wrapping Valerie in a hug. “I’m not going to play her game. I’ll drive you back, and she can go fuck herself for all I care.”

“She’ll punish me even worse for that, worse than whatever the letter says.”

Her voice was barely louder than a whisper; any more than that would have risked her fragile emotional containment.

“I’ll talk to her in person, she’ll see reason…”

“No…” Valerie said, shaking her head. “I don’t know. Maybe. You know her better than I do.”

“There’s no other option. I am not doing this.” They produced the letter, crumpled, from one of their pockets, and tossed it onto the kitchen island.

Valerie unconsciously took a step back from it, like the paper itself was dangerous.

“Can we.. Can I finish dinner?”

“Oh,” Lucca blinked. “Yeah. Of course. Casserole, right? You want a beer?”

Lucca took their beer into the office to work while Valerie finished cooking, with instructions to shout if they had any questions. The trust that Lucca had put in her to cook unsupervised was an extra layer of nervousness that she could have done without, but with the process already started it would be a waste to abandon it.

Valerie opened a beer while she finished cooking, which did not take long. The casserole was simple to assemble, and then it went into the oven for forty-five minutes. Valerie sat listlessly at the kitchen island while this happened, nursing the beer. It was strong and more bitter than she was used to, but she hoped halfheartedly that the alcohol might help her relax or bring about some kind of clarity.

The timer on the oven beeped, and she downed the last of the beer, with a grimace. It was lukewarm at that point. The alcohol had relaxed nothing and clarified nothing, only left her faintly buzzed. She had not eaten much at lunch, and the beer had gone into a mostly empty stomach.

The beeping timer brought Lucca back from their office, and the two of them ate, mostly in tense silence.

Valerie stared at her empty plate for several minutes before Lucca cleared their throat.

“I don’t think the answers you’re looking for are gonna show up on dirty tableware.”

“Huh?” Valerie looked up at Lucca in confusion.

“Never mind. You done?”

Valerie slid her plate across the counter; Lucca cleared the rest of the dishes, cracked open another beer, and turned back to face her. They offered her the open bottle, which she declined with a grateful gesture.

“You figure anything out?”

“It’ll be worse for me if you try to protect me,” she replied, flatly. “I’m grateful, but even the call you just made…”

She had spent the last hour trying to find another way around the problem, and come up empty.

Lucca did not seem surprised by her conclusion.

“She’s pretty stubborn once she’s set on something. It’s usually a good trait, but sometimes…” they said with a shrug, and took a swig from their beer. “I’m not here to tell you what you can or can’t do. But this thing… I won’t do it. You can do what you think is right.”

Lucca had left the crumpled letter disregarded on the kitchen island, and it had taken a great amount of willpower for Valerie not to read it while she waited for the casserole to bake.

“I don’t know what that says,” she said, gesturing toward the letter, “But Lucca, please… I haven’t asked you for much, but please just do what she says.”

“You don’t know what you’re asking.”

“No,” she replied in agreement, and rested her elbows on the top of the kitchen island, and rested her head in her hands, staring down at the wood grain. Lucca isn’t vanilla; they aren’t squeamish. Whatever it is must be bad.

“Please, Lucca. Do you want me on my knees? Begging?”

“I’ll think about it.”

“I need to go back. Please don’t make it harder on me than it needs to be. It won’t be forever.”

“Won’t it?”