“Are you a stargazer too?” she asked.
I shook my head. “That’s Garrison’s department.”
“Really?” She studied the telescope a little longer and then dropped onto one of the nearby deck chairs.
I followed suit, picking up a Rubix cube I’d left up here one day or another. My fingers fell into place around its surface, twisting one row and then another. It drove Garrison crazy that I didn’t care that I never actually “solved” one of these. I just liked seeing the different arrays of colors that ended up appearing.
“Have you ever used one?” I asked, indicating the telescope.
Dess shook her head and looked up at the sky, exposing the sleek line of her throat. “I’ve never spent much time outside,” she admitted. “And I’ve never even seen one of these in person. You can really make out that many more stars than just with your eyes?”
“Yep,” I said. “And planets and moons and that sort of thing too. I’ve got to admit, I don’t really know what Garrison gets out of it. I can find prettier pictures of space on the internet in two seconds flat.”
Dess let out a soft laugh. “Of course you can.” She turned back to me, watching the swift but aimless flicks of my fingers over the Rubix cube. “So, what is it you like about meditation? It looks pretty boring from the outside.”
I had to let out a laugh of my own. Her bluntness was as refreshing as the air up here. I could tell she wasn’t trying to be insulting, only making an honest observation.
“I’d bet it does,” I said. “Have you ever tried meditating?”
“No to that as well. Apparently I’ve missed out on a lot of things.”
I thought about how to best explain it. I could have given her the response that Julius would have used—the one that claimed that yoga and meditation relaxed the body and improved potential. It allowed for cleaner fighting and a clearer mind.
But I didn’t use meditation for those reasons.
I set the cube down on my lap. “Well, the idea is that it’s supposed to ground you. It stills the world around you, and it allows you to simply exist without being affected by thoughts of the past or the future.”
She made a sound of acknowledgment, picking up on my framing. “But for you it’s different?”
“Yeah. I can’t be still, not really. I’ve never been able to completely slow down. When I meditate, I can focus on the moving world around me, and it feels like it brings a sort of balance inside me. Recognizing that I’m surrounded by as much energy outside as I have inside me helps to still me in a way, I guess.”
Dess nodded, giving me a thoughtful look. “You do seem to move around an awful lot.”
I glanced down at my foot, which had begun to tap against the tiles, and grinned. “My mom always said I was full of beans. The doctor said I probably had ADHD, but my parents never really pursued that. They figured I should get it under control through self-discipline or whatever. Which is a lot easier to say than do. I pissed off a lot of the other kids at school, always running around, talking their ears off. We won’t get into how many times they kicked my ass.”
And worse things that I didn’t want to think about. I’d moved on from all that.
“That’s awful,” Dess said, sounding offended enough on my behalf to gratify me.
I shrugged. “Kids being kids. Grown-ups refusing to do their jobs and rein them in. I figured out some things, made use of the skills I developed to put a few people in their places, and now I’ve put all that behind me. People can judge me as much as they want, but I am who I am. Take it or leave it.”
“So, you just…don’t care what people think about you?”
“Well, I care about the people who matter, like the guys I work with, in whatever areas are relevant. But otherwise, no. It doesn’t matter what anyone thinks. I lived too long trying to be who people wanted me to be and beating myself up for not fitting their preferences. It was miserable—I won’t go back to that. Now, I’m happy with myself. I live my life to the fullest and enjoy every twist and turn along the way.”
Dess’s gray eyes darkened. “But you’re a cop—you’ve got to be chasing down criminals and figuring out murders and the rest all the time. How can you enjoy life like that?”
The question sounded genuine, and it tugged at my heart. “There’s more to life than work. I’m sitting here chatting with you right now, aren’t I? And I chose this career because I get a thrill out of a lot of it too—tracking people down, figuring out what they’re up to.” We’d just avoid the subject of what the crew really did with that information.
Dess nodded, but her expression stayed bemused. The idea seemed foreign to her, almost like a fantasy novel full of fictional characters that could never exist in reality.
Did she really have no concept of how to enjoy herself? God, what a number that prick of an ex-boyfriend had done on her.
“I’m sure you can enjoy your life too, Dess,” I had to say. “I don’t know the details of what you went through before you ended up with us, but after this case is over, you can go do whatever you want. It’ll be your choice now.”
Assuming the client didn’t decide she was a loose end we had to deal with.
Dess smiled, but a trace of sadness lingered in it. What had she endured that made her believe that life wasn’t worth taking pleasure in?