"If you want to stay in Brighton a while longer, Caroline, Flora is fine. She really is. Actually, I think you're going to have a hard time getting her to leave."
"I don't want to stay, Gillian. It's almost been a week. I can't stand to be here another minute. I've never wanted to be in my own house more in my life. But I haven't slept more than a couple hours and I – well I just want to know that Mel's okay." Caroline paced the sidewalk outside the police station. Small puddles were gathered on the concrete from the drizzle overnight. It was just barely light now, and the night shift was turning over. It was hard to tell who looked sleepier at six am - the police coming off or those headed on.
"The police have said I can go whenever I'd like. They've got a couple folks out looking for Melanie, but it's been an hour. I mean, there's nothing I can do short of roaming the streets myself, and both Robbie and Sergeant Weixel have both squashed that notion."
"Don't make a rash decision, yeah? Stay. Get some sleep at least. Last thing you want is to get in an accident."
Caroline thought back to the car wash and literally running into a man she'd never seen before and thought she'd never see again. Only a few days passed and now a lifetime ago. How could so much change come in such a short time?
She chided herself. Change came in the blink of an eye. One tiny, insignificant decision about picking up milk, for instance, had altered her life forever. She ought to know the pace and potential of change better by now.
"You're right." She sighed.
"Course I am. I'm right a lot. 'Specially when it comes to watching out for my little sister."
"An hour younger perhaps, but little is taking it a bit far." Caroline surprised herself and laughed. She was grateful for where she and Gillian's relationship had traveled over the past few years. Close enough now that their frequent quarrels left her exasperated but not uncertain. They'd recently discovered that Gillian was an hour older than Caroline, and that had provided both of them with plenty of amusement. She pulled her jacket tighter around her shoulders and watched a woman across the street doing the same thing for a small boy.
"Yeah. Well, just be safe, Caroline. I'll be glad to see you home. Robbie being a help?"
"Of course he is. He's a better man than you deserve, Gillian." Caroline said it with a smile and hoped it was heard on the other end.
"He is, but don't you go and tell him. Everyone else already does."
"Mmmm. Funny thing about that is, you're also a better woman than he deserves. You really are. Be good if you could actually hear that."
There was a pause and Caroline stared blankly at the pavement. She leaned against the brick wall of the station and closed her eyes. The sun was coming up, piercing the giant clouds hovering over the Channel. The rays burned her already grainy eyelids but the light and the break from the musty smelling stale air inside still felt good. Even here, away from the water, she could feel the bracing sting of the salt in her nose and eyes.
"Sure. Maybe. Anyway, don't be an idiot. And tell Robbie to take a break from swapping bullshit stories with his new mates and call me."
Another laugh from Caroline. Change came quickly but it also came slowly. In the course of one afternoon she'd gained a step-sister. After five more years, she'd gained a trusted, and to be quite honest much needed, friend.
"Yep. Will do. Give Flora a massive hug for me, would you please? And tell Celia I'll call her. I will. I just - " Caroline didn't know how to finish the sentence.
"Yeah. My pleasure, on both fronts. No harm in keeping the exact details from her until you're home. Really isn't. She always liked Melanie."
"I suppose." Caroline straightened up. Robbie had come out the door with a group of men headed off shift and he lingered at her side. "Anyway. Robbie's just come outside. Would you like to say hello?"
"Damn right."
Caroline pulled her face into a caution flag and held the mobile out to Robbie.
He winced, then grinned, and took it from her. She paced off toward the end of the block. Still well inside the bustle of the station and the men and women in uniform.
She was chilled to the bone with lack of sleep and worry. She waved at Robbie and headed inside. They'd let her and Robbie crash in the break room while they continued to look for Melanie, and as she made her way past other faces in the lobby that were hollow and anxious she blessed the privacy she'd been able to enjoy.
A new face greeted her at the desk, a young woman who couldn't even be Lawrence's age. She smiled and gave her name. The woman frowned, sifted through some paperwork, and then buzzed her inside the heavy steel door. Privacy or not, Caroline hated the thick, permanent sound of it when it closed behind her.
She opened the break room door on a mess of coffee cups and wrappers from hastily consumed breakfasts. Automatically she set to cleaning it up, staring at a poster about clearing your own mess that apparently went unheeded. The hot water and the routine as she washed the mugs soothed her and she set them on the drainboard one by one.
The room was spotless now and she had little to do but cry, so she did. It felt like she hadn't stopped crying in twelve hours, but this time there was a new urgency and an edge of hysteria to it. She sat down on the dingy and spotted green couch that she'd refused to approach hours ago. Judgement about the current state and history of the sofa gave way to a soft place to land. She laid down, closed her eyes, and talked herself out of turning into a sobbing scene hundreds of miles from home in the nondescript, tidy break room of the Brighton police department.
It wasn't the first time she kissed Mel that Caroline often dreamed about. As much as she'd pined for it, their first kiss was what a first kiss was. Exhilarating, new, tentative and demanding more without taking it. Instead, it was the first kiss after Caroline realized that she was in love with Melanie that swirled in her thoughts - and she dreamed about it as much when she was awake as when she slept.
"No Caroline. I'm sorry but you're simply wrong. You are!" Melanie peered around the open door of Caroline's freezer and shook her dark head. They'd been dating for more than six months now, and Caroline's freezer was home to a plethora of ice creams.
"I am not wrong Melanie Wysocki and I'll prove it to you." Caroline looked up at her from her mobile over the rim of her glasses and shook her head with equal resolve.
"Don't you dare look it up Caroline, please. Just take my word for it. Because if you Google it you'll see you're wrong, and then you'll be frustrated and pout about it. I know you will. Please, would you just take my word for it?"
"I won't and you know I won't. Because I'm right."
Melanie came through from the kitchen, sat and heaved back against the couch with a great sigh. She crossed her legs and set her bowl of orange cardamom ice cream on her knee. "Well please just don't be mad at me about it."
Caroline looked up from her mobile. "I won't be mad. And I do not pout."
"No, you don't. Never. Sorry." Melanie smiled, shrugged and made an innocent show of licking her spoon.
Caroline narrowed her eyes and returned her attention to Google.
"See now, just what I was saying. Tycho Brahe had a gold nose. Everyone knows that."
"Keep reading."
Caroline scrolled down. She scowled. "Well it only says it's more likely 'believed' now to be bronze rather than gold."
"Keep reading."
Caroline tossed her mobile on the coffee table. "As of 2009 I would not have been wrong."
"Yes, but as of today, you are. And that's okay."
"Oh is it okay? Do you give me permission to be wrong?" Caroline arched her eyebrow and Melanie shrugged again.
"Ummmm, would the correct answer here be yes?" Melanie squinted her eyes, grinned, and hugged her bowl of ice cream close, ostensibly waiting for Caroline's volley of good-natured temper to begin.
Instead of retaliating or pouting, Caroline picked up the ice cream, took a bite, and set it on the coffee table next to her mobile and Melanie's well-thumbed copy of The Sound and the Fury.
Melanie smiled but her eyes followed each of Caroline's deliberate movements.
"The correct answer is yes. And you, Miss Melanie, have a way of being right that drives me batty." Caroline laid a finger on Melanie's nose and then replaced it with a kiss.
"In a good way or a bad way?"
"Why don't I let you decide."
Caroline gave Melanie two chances to make up her mind that night and another just before dawn the next morning, when Melanie said she still just wasn't sure.
She woke an hour later and flung an arm over her eyes. The bright spring sunshine was doing its best to blind her and light every corner of her bedroom. It was still early spring and lacking the searing heat of the summer sun, just a comforting blanket of warmth. Caroline drowsed and stretched. Melanie was turned toward her, away from the window and the sunlight and wearing a sleepy frown. She reached out to run a hand across her forehead, sure it would wake her but unable to stop herself.
Melanie did wake, and as she saw Caroline studying her, a smile sweeter and brighter than the spring sunshine lit her face.
"Here." Melanie giggled and held the crème colored sheet over her head and covered them both to block the sun. The light still poured through, but now it cast a soft glow and turned Melanie's skin a dark amber and her eyes a sparkling jade green.
Caroline felt stillness and permanence - and love. For the first time since Kate had gone, she knew she was in love. She blinked back happy tears. The beating of her heart slowed and she was outside of time, consuming Melanie and memorizing the shape of a moment that could never be replicated.
"I love you."
"Oh Caroline." Melanie didn't say anything more and Caroline didn't wait, because she didn't care. She kissed Melanie and she made love to her again, and when they did it was as new and fresh as the first time, but so intimate and intentional that Caroline thought they'd never stop. Who they were was changed forever, and Caroline's world remade all in a sunny instant.
And that was the moment and the kiss that Caroline constantly dreamed about, awake and asleep. It was what was in her mind when she woke in the cold, harsh LED glare of the Brighton police station, Robbie's hand on her shoulder and holding her mobile out to her.
"It's Melanie."