Eighteen: Morning
Max woke to sunlight, seeping through the blinds. Blinking and groggy, she lay there in the thick, golden light, watching dust particles dance in the air above her. Next to her, the curves of Chloe's body pressed into hers, warm and soft and perfect. For an instant she wished she had her camera, but the urge passed; she could never capture the essence of this moment on film or in pixels.
A groan and a long exhalation told her Chloe was awake too. Her jaws opened in a face-splitting yawn as she ran her fingers through her dishevelled mop of blue hair and then stretched with glorious immodesty. How Chloe could look so fucking gorgeous first thing in the morning, while she herself resembled a puffy-eyed zombie, seemed to defy the laws of physics. "Morning, Max."
"Chloe," Max said, smiling so hard her face ached.
"Hate to break it to you, but it looks like someone stole all your clothes again."
She giggled. "That was you."
"Oh yeah." She turned onto her side and reached out to pull Max in. "Come here."
She curled into Chloe, head tucked under her chin, arms twined around each other, legs tangled together, and for a while they lay in the morning sunlight under their heaps of blankets. Chloe pressed her lips to the top of Max's head. "Love you, Max. Hella."
A contented sigh poured out of her as she cuddled closer, on the verge of drifting back to sleep. Chloe shifted and Max's eyes flickered open a moment, coming to rest on the tattooed arm poking out from under the blankets. Max trailed her fingers over the spirals of thorny vines between the tropical blooms. It was just like Chloe, something beautiful tangled up in all those thorns. She pressed her lips to the brilliant red ink.
Stroking her hair, Chloe leaned close to Max's ear and, as if she'd been thinking along the same lines, whispered, "You're the flower, Max."
"Chloe." The name fell from her lips like a whispered prayer. Her hand travelled down the smooth skin of Chloe's back, to the undulations of her rib cage, and the rise of her hip, delighting in the solidity of the warm body pressed against hers. She was real. Real and so wonderfully alive. "I'm so glad you're here with me. And..." She pulled away so that she could look up into Chloe's eyes. "Thanks for not letting me ditch Arcadia Bay."
"Glad it was the right call. I mean I'm not exactly life coach material here." Chloe huffed and Max felt the air leave her lungs, felt the heat of Chloe's breath across her skin.
They stayed like that for several minutes more until finally Chloe sighed. "Dude, what time is it? I don't want to get busted if mall-cop starts doing a patrol or something."
Max grimaced. That was an alarming thought.
They scrabbled around for their phones which remained in the pockets of their discarded clothes. Max found hers first. It was 11:34 a.m.
"Shitballs. Mom's blowing up my phone." A disgusted grunt followed as Chloe scanned the messages. "She wants to talk about Thanksgiving."
"We can go get lunch and talk to Joyce right away," Max said absently. "Thanksgiving won't be bad. For cereal. We'll have turkey and cranberry sauce and my grandma will bring a homemade pumpkin pie."
Chloe grunted.
Jeans half pulled on, Max paused and glanced at Chloe as she sat there on the edge of the bed glaring at her phone with not a stitch of clothing on. A blush crept up Max's face as she took in every line and curve laid bare by the sunlight.
Chloe caught her staring and her frown turned into a–just slightly–smug grin. "Taking in the scenery, Maximus?" And then with a raised eyebrow, her gaze raked up and down Max's half dressed body.
And in spite of the fact that Max knew Chloe had seen every single freckle already, she still felt herself flushing right up to her ears.
Grinning, Chloe leaned over and pressed a kiss into her hair. "Get some clothes on, lazy-ass. Time to get back to the real world."
#
The lunchtime rush was in full swing when they returned to the scene of the crime. Almost-crime? Borrowing archival documents wasn't anywhere near as bad as stealing from the handicapped fund had been–and both were, after all, for a good cause–but still Max felt a twinge as they passed the basement door and marched into the cafeteria.
They waited in line for their lunches–tuna(?) salad sandwiches with a side of pureed squash... or carrots... or maybe yam since it was almost the holidays? Max couldn't say for sure. At the end of the line, Joyce was spooning out squarish looking green peas, but she got someone to take her place and sat down with them at their table.
"David's having trouble finding someone who can cover for him over the holidays so–"
"So he's not coming?" Chloe suggested as she poked the fishy filling of her sandwich.
Joyce gave her a stern look. "He's coming. But we're going to have to drive in that morning. We'll leave early so we don't hold anyone up."
Max glanced at Chloe, but she appeared to be inspecting the orange mush on her plate and Max decided it was up to her. "I think we're planning to go the day before."
Chloe huffed. "So we don't have to get up at the ass-crack of dawn."
Joyce turned her attention to Max. "Are you sure your family won't mind having us overnight? Your mother said your grandma would be coming too."
"It's fine," Max assured her. "You and David will have the guest room, grandma will have my room, and Chloe and I can use the pull-out couch downstairs."
The look Chloe shot her was much like the one from last week when Max had said that the cafeteria's mystery meat 'wasn't that bad'. "After all that camping we don't even get to sleep in a real bed?"
"We could set up the tent is the backyard if you really want."
"Pass."
After a spoonful of the orange stuff, Max still wasn't sure whether it was carrot, squash or some mixture of both. "Why does David need a replacement? The work crews will be on holidays, won't they?"
"It's mostly to keep an eye on Blackwood and prevent vandalism," Joyce said. "He's fit to be tied. The police are already busy what with all the mess." She heaved a sigh. "And they're transferring Jefferson to county tomorrow."
"Good riddance," Chloe muttered.
"But if they haven't found Nathan..."
Joyce reached out and put a hand on Max's shoulder. "That's the district attorney's problem now, not yours."
And though she mumbled her agreement, all she could think of as she munched on her tuna-ish sandwich was booting up her laptop and trying to find out everything she could about Michelle Van Aardt.
#
They divided the search areas between them: Max focussed on Arcadia Bay and its environs, using her phone again, while Chloe got the laptop to troll the Seattle records. It was the sort of mission that required coffee and electrical outlets so they parked themselves at Bay Café again and dug in.
Sighing, Max downed the remains of her now tepid coffee and squinted at her phone. She'd found a few Michelle Van Aardts on social media, but none seemed connected to Oregon, and the photos she found didn't look even remotely like the punk girl in the 90s photographs. Across from her, Chloe was frowning at the laptop screen like it had flipped her the bird, and in spite of everything, Max couldn't help but smile. She loved that beautiful pissed off face so much.
And she loved how hard Chloe had tried to help her relax last night. She'd been so nervous, but there was Chloe, making lame jokes every time Max started feeling embarrassed or awkward. Being able to laugh through all the imperfect moments made the whole of them beautiful. It was like a photo where individual elements were broken or uneven, but taken together they balanced out the entire composition; a perfect photo wasn't a photo of something perfect.
Chloe caught her staring and, grinning, winked. "No slacking off, Max-Attack."
Max rolled her eyes and turned her attention back to her phone. She started looking for any Van Aardts in Oregon. That was when she found the obituary.
It was a short announcement about the death of Evelyn Van Aardt, aged 65. The date was October 9, two days before the storm. Oddly it didn't mention family or much of anything except that the service would held Wednesday and flowers could be sent to the Arcadia Bay Cemetery.
A wave of cold shuddered down Max's spine. That was where Chloe would have been buried if she'd died... if Max had let Nathan shoot her. Chloe would be there and Nathan would be in prison instead of... Of wherever he was. But he knew that graveyard too. His contest photo... it had been a black and white shot of a gravedigger. She'd glanced at it when she and Chloe had gone on their first nighttime raid at Blackwell. And while the image had been disturbing, it had also been an excellent shot.
The photo had been taken at a distance so that the gravedigger's features were vague, just a large shape, bent over with a shovel. Whose grave had he been digging and when had Nathan been at the cemetery? Arcadia Bay was a small town–they wouldn't be digging there every day. If the photo was at all recent then it could have been Evelyn Van Aardt's grave. Max grimaced at the thought of Nathan scanning the obituaries for a chance at a morbid photo op.
Max got to her feet. "I'm going to order some more coffee. You want anything?"
"Wouldn't say no to more caffeine."
Her thoughts lingered on the cemetery and the grave that would have been dug for Evelyn Van Aardt, even as she rang the bell and ordered more coffee for them both. Jefferson would have needed an easy place to ditch Nathan's corpse. Was a cemetery too obvious?
A few minutes later, she returned to their table in the back corner, coffees in hand. She was just setting down their paper cups when Chloe's fist thumped down on the table. "He killed her!"
"What?" Chloe's eyes blazed, her hands gripped the edges of the table, white knuckled and Max was worried she would overturn it, Hulk-style.
"That motherfucker killed her."
Max moved to her side, reaching to squeeze her shoulder. "Who?"
"Michelle." She shook her head. "Fuck it, Max, Michelle Van Aardt... She's dead."