“So,” she said.
“So,” he agreed. His eyes were Fourth-of-July blue, high and bright with the snap of a flag in the wind. But behind them she could see something moving, like pages turning in a book no one was allowed to read.
“How do you feel?” she asked.
He took another sip of soda. “Fine. No one got hurt, and Ethan’s in jail. I count it as a victory for the good guys.”
“Have you called your wife yet? To let her know what happened?”
He shook his head emphatically. “No.”
“Don’t want to scare her?”
“No, it’s my mother who gets scared.” He smiled wryly. “I figured something might be on the news by tonight, so I called my sister Janet and asked her to talk to Mom. I’ll still have to face one of her ‘Why can’t you get into some other line of work’ lectures, but I can duck it for a few days until she’s cooled off.”
“Uh huh. And you didn’t talk to Linda because . . .”
He frowned. She kept her face open, waiting. He glanced around the kitchen, shifted in his chair, cleared his throat. She sat still, her hand lying palm up on the table. “So this is like PTSD counseling?” He laughed a little. She tilted her head a fraction of an inch. Listening. No threat. “Okay. Linda and I have been married sixteen years now. So she’s been with me through a lot of shit. Armed deployments, police work, bullets flying, the whole nine yards. And, I don’t know if she started out like this or if she cultivated it, but she thinks I’m invulnerable. I’ve learned that I can’t go to her and say, ‘I was frightened out of my wits today,’ because she won’t understand why. What I do, what I’ve done in the past, is like an action-adventure movie or a television show to her. Nothing’s quite real, so why should it bother me?” He flicked a tiny calico ornament on the tabletop tree, then looked at Clare and smiled slightly. “Did I just do an elaborate version of ‘my wife doesn’t understand me’?”
She smiled. “Uh huh. But you don’t have your shirt unbuttoned halfway down your chest to show off your gold chains, so it’s legitimate.”
“Oh, God save me from male menopause.” He laughed a little, shaking his head.
She leaned forward, crossing her arms on the table. “You know, it’s not unusual, being unable to share that kind of thing with your wife or your family. I used to see a lot of that, guys who had spent time in very intense, very dangerous situations, couldn’t talk about it with their wives. Couldn’t admit to being scared to their buddies, of course, except when it’s a joke. It builds up after a while, all that stuff inside and no way to let it out. I think that’s why there’s so much drinking and wild-ass behavior in some units.” She dropped her glance to his glass. “Are you an alcoholic?”
He choked on a mouthful of soda. “Holy shit! You don’t beat around the bush, do you? ’Scuse my French.”
She looked at him mildly. “You don’t need to be handled with kid gloves. Answer me.”
“Christ on a crutch. Yes, I’m a recovering alcoholic. I’ve been dry for five years now. What the hell does that have to do with anything?”
“I’m just wondering, if you can’t talk about it with your wife, and you can’t pour it into a bottle, who do you talk with? Where do you go?”
He crossed his arms against his chest and leaned back in his chair, looking up toward the ceiling. “I don’t, I guess,” he said, finally. He looked at her. “But let’s face it, it’s not like I’m a homicide detective in the city. I’m not looking at dead bodies week after week, or having guns pointed at me on a regular basis. I’m just the chief of an eight-man police force in little ol’ Millers Kill. Hell, the entire three town area we’re responsible for doesn’t have more than twelve thousand people, tops.”
“Twelve thousand people for whom you feel personally responsible.” She pointed one blunt-nailed finger at him. “Tell me, what feels the worst about what happened today? Being scared you might die?”
“No.” He braced his elbows on the table. “Only an idiot isn’t scared when somebody pulls a gun on him. I’m not ashamed of it. Not inclined to think about it too much afterwards.”
“The rush you get when you walk away and you haven’t died? Do you like that?”
“No! I mean, yes, I like walking away, but no, I’m not an adrenaline junkie. I’d be perfectly happy if the most action I ever saw was being dunked at the police booth during the county fair, believe me.”
“Is it the fact that you should have known that Ethan was on edge and ready to blow? That if you had handled the situation differently, he never would have picked up that shotgun?”
He dropped back into his chair, his face paling. “Holy shit! Do you believe that?”
“Do you?” She leaned farther across the table, crowding him against the truth.
“When you put it that way . . . shit.” He swallowed. “Yeah, I do feel responsible. It was a stupid situation to get into. I kept thinking, what a piss-awful waste it would be if Ethan didn’t make it, because I hadn’t taken the time to find out the kids in his school already had him tried and convicted and on death row. Instead, I waltzed in there with my patrol car and my service piece and my warrant. Not even a phone call ahead of time so his parents could set him straight about what would happen. That’s just plain careless. Careless and lazy and stupid.” He clenched the edge of the table tightly.
“I knew about what the kids were saying at the high school. Heard about it on Monday night. I didn’t do anything about it.”
He scowled at her. “That’s different.”
She scowled back. “Why? Because it’s not my job to know everything about everybody? Because I’m not personally responsible every time one of the citizens of Millers Kill falls off the straight and narrow? Because I shouldn’t do all I can to . . . to . . . to protect and to serve?”
He laughed quietly. “That’s the LAPD, not Millers Kill.”
“No, that’s you.” She took a drink of her beer. “The angel at the gate with the flaming sword, that’s you. Guarding your own little paradise from the evil of a fallen world.”
