Identity: Undercover

“I didn’t apologize for you!” She made it sound like he’d been ashamed of her. That had never been true.

“You did, Max.” She nodded her head, curls tumbling down over one eye. She shoved them out of the way. “That time I tried to bring a casserole to the church potluck—don’t you remember? ‘Callie didn’t realize,’ you told them.”

“Well you didn’t, but that was my fault for not explaining that it was supposed to be a dessert potluck.” He couldn’t fathom the cause of the despair flooding her face. “What was wrong with saying that?”

“Nothing. Except that you had to keep saying it. Over and over. ‘Excuse Callie.’ ‘Sorry, Callie didn’t understand.’ ‘Poor dumb Callie.’” She laughed but it caught in her throat and sounded more like a sob.

“I never said—”

“I became an embarrassment to myself. Especially with your church friends. I didn’t fit in with them, Max, no matter how hard I tried. I couldn’t share their stories the way you could. I never went to their youth meetings, their parties. I wasn’t part of their group. I even failed at trying to entertain them.”

He remembered the New Year’s Eve party she’d begged to host, the elaborate preparations she’d gone to, how flat and lifeless it had seemed.

“So maybe we should have met new people.”

“We did, remember? I still blew it and you were still embarrassed so don’t pretend.” Her blue eyes hardened. “I’m not the kind of person who impresses people like the ones you know, Max. We should have realized from the start that my ability as a chameleon only extends to my work.”

“That’s not—”

“I can’t pretend to be the person you need anymore,” she told him, her voice brimming with a desperation he’d never heard before. “I can’t be your wife. That’s what I figured out in the Outback. That’s why I had the papers drawn up as soon as I got back. I knew I had to do it.”

“But we made a commitment, Callie. We’re married. You can’t just walk away from that!” Max felt like he was slipping and couldn’t regain his footing. “You can’t just stop being married.”

“I already have. That’s why you got those papers.”

“Really?” Her flat tones infuriated him. “Why now? What’s the rush? Is there someone else?”

“Don’t be stupid.” She offered him a glance of pity. “In the Outback I had a lot of time to look at what I’d made of my life, what I’d done to yours. You need to be married to someone like one of your friends, Max. Someone who knows how things work in your circle, who’s used to your way of doing things.”

“It’s nice to know you’ve decided that for both of us,” he snapped, saw the icy frost over her eyes. Or maybe it was tears. “What about what I want?” he asked quietly.

“You already told me what you don’t want.” The words bit into him with a pain he couldn’t avoid. They were his words. “You don’t want a wife who does what I do, you don’t want to be married to someone who might have to leave on a moment’s notice and can’t guarantee when she’ll return. You want the kind of life I can’t live.”

“Can’t or won’t?” He tilted her chin so he could see into her eyes.

She met his gaze. Just for an instant he thought he saw a glimmer of the person he’d fallen in love with three years ago, the girl with no past, no family, but who threw herself into love wholeheartedly.

The girl he now knew he’d never really known at all.

Callie pulled out of his grasp, rose. “I’ll go make some dinner. I guess we missed lunch.”

He let her go, watched through the window as she mucked about in the galley. As usual, she was focused on the moment, intent on her work. But he couldn’t help wondering—did she ever think about that day?

“It’s ready,” she told him, huffing a little under the weight of the huge tray she carried up the stairs.

Max took it from her, set it on the table. Callie laid two mismatched placemats across from each other, then carefully arranged the place settings on them. He’d specifically equipped his vessel with two complete sets of tableware, one for more formal occasions, which she’d chosen to place in front of him, one plainer set, which she’d selected for herself. He opened his mouth to ask why, quickly clamped it shut. One thing he’d learned—Callie’s actions were never random.

Callie always had a reason for her behavior. Only now Max was beginning to realize that most of the time he’d never bothered to find out what her reasons were. The different dishes were meant to point out the differences between them.

He sat silent. Now was hardly the time to argue. It would only emphasize her belief that she didn’t fit—as she’d claimed—into his life.

Shouldn’t that be their life?

Chagrin chewed at him as he recalled the many accommodations she’d made to fit into his life—and the few he’d made to fit his life to hers.

“Aren’t you going to sit down?”

Max sat, sampled her cooking and found it as exotic as ever. The flavors were different, complex but delicious nonetheless.

“It’s very good,” he told her, picking up his water glass. He clinked the glass of it against her plastic tumbler. “To the cook.”

“You used to say I made things too spicy. I used a lot of peppers. Is the shrimp going to bother your stomach?” she asked, her eyebrows pulled together in a furrow of concern as she sipped her water. “I guess lots of people find my food too hot.”

People like who? he wanted to demand, jealousy growing inside.

But while she’d been cooking he’d rethought his confrontational approach. Callie thought their differences were too great to be overcome. Maybe it was time to help her see the similarities they shared. Max leaned back in his chair and let the flavors burst onto his tongue while he launched into phase one of his new plan to get his wife back.

“It’s not too hot, Callie, nor too spicy,” he told her quietly. “It just takes a few minutes to identify the flavors hitting my tastebuds. I like it very much.”

“Which is a nice way of saying you can’t figure out what kind of sauce it’s supposed to be.” She watched his face, eyes brimming with curiosity. “Your stomach must have gotten stronger. You didn’t even comment on the paprika.”

Max let that pass, finished his meal, then pushed away the plate. “Nobody cooks like you, Callie,” he told her sincerely.

She seemed confused by his words, as if she couldn’t understand that he actually liked what she’d prepared. How humbling to realize that things he’d said and done had made her feel inadequate.

They sat in the silence as twilight fell around them. Encouraged by the fact that she didn’t make some excuse to hurry below to do the dishes, Max told her stories about the dog he’d adopted, the chocolate Lab he’d named Radar.

“Why Radar?”

“He can sense table scraps coming his way at a hundred feet,” he told her with a grin. “He’s boarding at the vet’s.”

Callie’s whole face seemed to soften as she stared out over the water. “I always wanted a dog,” she whispered. “But where I lived, dogs weren’t—”

Her cell phone rang. Max longed to beg her to ignore it, to finish what she’d been going to say. But she jumped up, hurried away from the table to dig it out of her backpack.

“Yes?” She listened for several minutes, then clicked it closed.

“Anything important?”

“An update. Finders got a report that Josiah was spotted on his way to Ketchikan. Apparently he hates staying in town so he’ll probably camp out with a couple of friends for two nights and show up in Ketchikan sometime the day after tomorrow. He usually doesn’t stay longer than a day.”

Meaning they had to get there ASAP. Max sighed. Always her work came between them. At least that’s what he was blaming it on this time.

He rose.

“I’ll get us under way if you don’t mind cleaning up this mess. Thanks for dinner, too. It was great.”

“You’re welcome. I’ll bring you up some tea when it’s ready.” She watched him ascend to the upper deck. “Isn’t it dangerous to sail at night?”

“We haven’t got time to sail, Callie. You need to get there fast so we’ll use the engines. I have radar, GPS, the whole deal installed on Hope so there’s not much danger. If I push it, we just might make it to Ketchikan in time to meet Josiah. A good thing I had the engine upgraded when I designed this baby.”

Max pulled anchor and backed them out of the cove, set his bearings and plotted his course. It was going to be tight, but there was an outside chance he could get her there by the day after tomorrow and he was taking it.

A balloon of pride lodged inside his gut as Hope skimmed over the smooth, flat surface of the water. His creation, his design. And they both worked beautifully. He made a small course correction, noticed a new blip on his radar. Someone else was going their way. Not unusual given they were traveling the Inside Passage.

Just for fun, he tracked starboard for a while. The blip followed. He pushed the throttle up a couple of knots. The distance between them expanded only for a few seconds, then the blip caught up. Someone was monitoring their course so closely they adjusted their own to follow.

Now that was odd.

Max wasn’t sure how much time passed before Callie returned with an insulated mug of steaming hot tea. He took a sip and smiled. Sugared exactly right. “Perfect. Thank you.”

“Is your headache gone?” she asked quietly.

“Yes, thanks. Whatever you gave me certainly did the trick.”

She stood beside him, protected by the cabin’s glass surround, facing forward as the bow cut through the water.

A soft, sweet rush of comfort filled him that she was there, beside him—until she spoke and the peace between them disintegrated like fog in sun.

“You’re trying, Max. And I really appreciate that.”

He noted a little tremble in her voice, saw her lick her lips, draw a deep breath.

“I didn’t file for divorce lightly, but the truth we both know is that you can’t forgive me for what I did. I can’t forgive myself. That’s why I had the papers drawn up and sent to you. Once we reach Ketchikan, I hope you’ll sign them.”

What she’d done? He frowned, fought to make sense of her words. Did Callie really think that she alone was responsible for whatever had gone wrong between them? He knew losing the baby had changed her, that he should have talked about it more, tried to understand what she was going through. But he’d been so angry when she’d immediately taken another assignment overseas—he couldn’t understand that. Why had she run away? Why then?

He’d told her from the beginning that he wanted a family. But after she’d taken off and stayed away, he’d begun to wonder if Callie had wanted a child—or if she’d just let him think she did.

“You’re in a bit of a rush to file for divorce already, aren’t you?” he asked tightly. “We haven’t even tried to talk, haven’t spent time trying to figure out if we can fix what’s gone wrong. I think we owe our marriage that.”

“There is no point in talking. You don’t know me, Max. You never did. That’s not your fault. It’s mine, it’s who I am. I’m not the kind of person you should have married. I realize that now. But I can’t take any more guilt for the past. I—” She hiccupped a sob, stifled it. “I can’t.”

As quietly as she came, she disappeared below. Except for the well-tuned purr of the motor, all was quiet on the boat. But Max knew Callie wasn’t sleeping.

The past, one tiny chunk of it, lay between them, dead, buried even, but not forgotten.

Never forgotten.

Max preferred to face life head-on, hit the hard spots and work his way through to a resolution. But to do that in this marriage he needed Callie’s cooperation and it was clear she wasn’t about to talk to him—not tonight, not ever—by the sounds of what she’d just said.

So what now?

He glanced at the console, noted the tiny red blip on the radar that continued to draw closer. He changed his course three times, watched the blip move three times.

This wasn’t just another craft traveling the Inside Passage. Someone was deliberately following them.

Why?

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